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When Ryan Aubert packed his overnight bag on Aug. 28, 2005, he never thought that one year later, he would still be away from home. Now the Louisiana native and his family are focused on building a future in McKinney.
They had lived in Gentile for more than 16 years until the eve of Katrina. He said he saw alerts about the hurricane on television, but they weren't what he would consider warnings. He said city officials had set up a route for evacuees so traffic would flow in one direction.
“But they really weren't trying to evacuate anyone,” Aubert said. “They just said ‘if this happens' or ‘if it comes to this point, this is what we're going to do.'”
Aubert said he wasn't going to take the chance of having to move his family out of there during a flood. He said his 73-year-old mother, Marion Johnson, couldn't walk, and he had a wife, Linda, and a 13-year-old daughter, Lakeiesha, to protect. Aubert and his family fled Sunday.
“Sure enough, the storm hit the next day,” Aubert said. “It was total chaos.”
Peter Lewis, Aubert's stepdad, decided to stay behind.
“During a previous storm, my family and I evacuated,” Lewis said. “Youngsters looted the homes in our neighborhood. I thought the situation would be similar this time, so I stayed to protect what I own.”
Once the rain stopped, the winds calmed and the skies cleared, Lewis laid in his bed to rest. He thought the worst was over. Soon after, he heard a loud boom. He jumped out of his bed and landed in about 2 feet of water. He looked out his window and saw tidal waves thrashing down the street. Within minutes, he said he found himself in water up to his neck.
Lewis said he tried to get out the front door, but security bars prevented him. He tried to escape through the kitchen, but he said he was afraid of being trapped in by his floating refrigerator. He made his way back to his bedroom and stayed on top of a cedar robe tree he had been given by his parents several years ago. He stayed there from about 6 p.m. until daybreak the next day.
“I had given him an ax and some tools in case he had to go to the attic,” Aubert said. “And he had to do just that. He had to escape the water, escape from drowning.”
“I was scared,” Lewis said. “My heart was in my hand.”
Lewis axed his way to the top of the roof, where he stayed for another eight hours before a rescue boat came for him.
He and his neighbor, who had been rescued while sitting on his own roof, were taken to the Interstate 10 bridge. The two men got out of the boat and waded through waist deep water to get to the bridge. Lewis said he slept there until the next day, when he and other evacuees had to wade through waist deep water again to get to buses that transported them to the New Orleans Convention Center. There, he said, the real nightmare began.
“The very first day elderly residents and diabetics who could not get adequate medical care were dying like flies,” Lewis said. “Two girls were raped and killed.”
Lewis said the toilets were clogged and overflowing. He and some other evacuees found food and because Lewis was a cook, he cooked the food.
“I couldn't get it to them fast enough,” Lewis said. “People were fighting over the food and bottled water. Some were shooting guns. During the entire time I was there, I only saw two policemen. They came into the center, looked around, and left. Finally, the National Guard brought bottled water and MREs (Meals Ready-to-eat).”
Soon after, Lewis boarded a bus that took him to Pine Bluff, Ark., where he was given three meals a day, a clean set of donated clothes, and his first shower since the whole ordeal began.
In the meantime, Aubert and the rest of the family continued to flee New Orleans. By the time they made it to St. James Parish, the hurricane had already wreaked havoc in their hometown. They got as far as Laplace before Aubert's mother had a heart attack. There were no medical facilities open in Laplace, so she was transported by ambulance to Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. Aubert, Linda and Lakeiesha followed in their 1988 Chevrolet Suburban.
“I was scared that I was going to lose my mother,” Aubert said. “I had never seen her like that before. She had lost all of her color. Her complexion was gray. It seemed that all her blood had been drained from her body.”
Once his mother was deemed in better health, they drove to Wylie, Texas. Once there, Johnson had another heart attack. She was transported to the Medical Center of McKinney. Aubert and the rest of his family stayed at the Red Cross shelter set up in the old Wal-Mart building for more than three weeks while his mother prepared for heart surgery.
Back in Arkansas, Lewis finally got in touch with his family who were now in Texas. It was Saturday, and he was told there were no flights available to get him to Texas later that evening or Sunday as well. So he left Arkansas on a Greyhound bus and arrived in McKinney just hours before his wife's surgery.
Members of the American Red Cross helped the family get a room at the Best Western. When Johnson got out of the hospital, she moved into the hotel, too. Two months later, the family moved into a three-bedroom apartment here.
“It is not yet equipped for the handicapped,” Aubert said. “We just recently got permission to put railings in the shower.”
Aubert, who is 6 feet, 3 inches tall and weighs 287 pounds, said he helps his mom get in and out of the shower and supports her so that she does not fall.
His mother also had to purchase medical items, such as a bed that props her up because she has to sleep in a sitting position, a scooter to get around because she can't walk, a bed-side porta-pot and waterproof pads for her bed. Aubert said FEMA wants his mother to pay back some of the money she used to pay for those items because the funds were given to her as rental assistance. Aubert said his mom was having a difficult time getting enrolled in the Medicaid/Medicare system here, and used the money to survive.
Aubert and his family also drained their savings. He worked for the U.S. Postal Service at St. Tammany for 10 years. He's trying to find work at a post office in this area, but was told there are no positions available in McKinney. He's also been told if he doesn't find another postal position before September, he will lose his tenure.
He said his wife Linda had a good paying job at Harrah's Casino in New Orleans. Now she's working odd jobs at restaurants, babysitting and picking up people's children after school.
Johnson gets a small Social Security check each month. FEMA still provides rental assistance, but they send it directly to the apartment complex.
Aubert said from all the things he's lost, he misses his house the most.
“I had bought my house when I was 21 years old, when I had started working for the post office,” Aubert said. “Everything was great. I didn't want for anything. I had at least three cars, motorized scooters, a drum set and a refrigerator in the garage. We used to go bike riding; we had go-carts and four-wheelers. It was pure fun.”
Now he and his family live in an apartment complex where there's a 10 p.m. curfew for outside recreational activities.
“We had privacy,” Aubert said . “We didn't have to worry so much about disturbing neighbors.”
His sister, Wanda Richardson, and her husband, Wilber Richardson, reside in the same apartment complex.
Wanda used to be a schoolteacher but now she's going through speech therapy after suffering from two strokes since Katrina hit one year ago.
His sister, Cassandra Body, and her husband, Robert Body, relocated to Baton Rouge.
He has yet to find his 45-year-old brother, Allen Aubert.
Aubert said many of his family members are still missing and others are being found in states as far away as New Mexico.
Just recently he located his mom's brother in a nursing home in Houston. Aubert said his wife searches the Internet for missing loved ones every day.
Linda's dad, Ishom McCall, died shortly after the catastrophe. Her brother managed to get her father out of the wreckage, but when he visited Louisiana a month later and saw the damage to his home, he was distraught.
“Before this happened, he was a lively guy, a really nice man,” Aubert said. “When he went back to New Orleans and saw that everything he had ever worked for was gone, he didn't want to talk to anybody or see anybody. Everything he had worked for was gone. He was deeply depressed and never recuperated. He died two weeks later.”
“It's by the grace of God that we survived,” Aubert said. “We pray and go to church every Sunday. We try to be good neighbors and do anything we can do to help others.”
Even though they had flood insurance coverage, their insurance carrier has yet to help them settle their claim for a home that once was appraised for $102,000. Aubert said he and his family are considering staying here if they can find jobs and get help purchasing a home.
“We've met some wonderful people here,” Aubert said. “And we have nowhere else to go.”
