By PAMELA ROBINSON, Register Staff Writer
Gainesville Daily Register
Gainesville —
Five years after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, there is still much to straighten out in the “Big Easy.”
Meanwhile, some of the people that moved on and away from New Orleans, such as Gainesville resident Margaret Joseph, are enjoying their new lives elsewhere.
Since getting to Gainesville, following a five-day ordeal trying to live at the Louisiana Superdome for shelter when the hurricane hit, Joseph says she is glad to be here instead of there.
“As we speak, they have three weather disturbances around the New Orleans area,” Joseph noted. She has been watching the weather there and all of the news covering the five-year anniversary since Katrina struck.
Joseph left on a bus out of New Orleans with seven other family members to seek temporary shelter, which landed them at the Gainesville shelter at the old hospital on Sept. 3, 2005.
She left behind her two-story home in the seventh ward of New Orleans and was one of the lucky ones, because her house was still standing and in the same place following the storm, though four feet of water had risen to ruin the first floor.
Some of her family and friends, many of them with properties in the lower ninth ward, had homes that were completely ruined and even washed away. Her sister’s home washed away from her land and another house floated over and came to rest on her property’s slab.
Joseph went back to New Orleans to visit for the first time this month. She attended a family reunion and saw many friends. She said she thought she would remember more of what happened during Katrina on her trip. Because the disaster was so traumatic, she said she has blocked most of it out. She does remember that her sister picked her up right before the flood hit and they headed for the Superdome.
“At 5:55 p.m., the sky was so beautiful,” Joseph noted. “Then at 6 p.m. the dark sky started closing in. When my sister picked me up at 6:10 p.m., it was like in science fiction. Raindrops were coming down and the whole sky was coming over us. It was really frightening.”
Once at the dome, Joseph said it was like a cattle drive trying to get into the building.
“It was awful,” she said of the whole situation.
Joseph eventually sold her home for approximately half the amount it was worth before Katrina hit, and she is using that money to live on now here in Gainesville.
Some of her family members have also settled in Texas. Her brother bought a house in Garland and her sister and family bought a home in Harker Heights.
“The rest went back to New Orleans,” she said, “but they are struggling. Their houses need work and they are waiting for money. Trying to iron things out with FEMA has been a tangle.
“The insurance people have not done it right,” she continued. “You pay flood insurance all those years and the insurance people haven’t given you much.”
Her memories of New Orleans are both cherished and sad.
“If we could go back together, living in that bowl...” Joseph said of her previous home and the homes of her many family members who lived close-by. “But, it’s not there anymore. I lost a cousin that drowned in Katrina. I miss a lot of friends. I don’t know where they are. Katrina got my family scattered all over the United States. Most of them can’t go back.”
Joseph said she has found a home here in Gainesville and she has no plans to leave.
“I love it here,” Joseph said. “I have peace of mind. It’s beautiful here and really nice.”
Born and raised in New Orleans, Joseph lived there 65 years before the Aug. 28 hurricane hit.
When she arrived at the Gainesville shelter, she was immediately rushed to the North Texas Medical Center and she woke up there two or three days later. She said that due to health problems, which became even more complicated living in the unsanitary conditions at the Superdome, she spent six months in a Gainesville nursing home. She now has her own apartment.
Though she is challenged with health problems, Joseph said she is pretty happy.
“I have many friends here. From day one I had people who helped me and made it comfortable for me here,” she said.
She still keeps a packed bag in her home with her medicine, insurance papers and other essential things in it, ready to take with her should she need to leave. Living in New Orleans, she said it was necessary and a part of life to be prepared for a disaster situation. She noted that Katrina was certainly not the first disaster she went through while living in Louisiana.
“It feels like yesterday, because everyday you remember something,” she said of the five years between Katrina and the present. “When you see something that you had, and you remember, and you don’t get them back, that’s hard.
“New Orleans was a great place, but I don’t trust it now.”
