Building a life at school after rebuilding a home

By Sarah Yokubaitis

For as long as I can remember, all I wanted was to leave Louisiana.

My only expectation of higher learning was to get as far away from home as possible. Full of naïve ideas about big city life in far away places, my state was too slow, too predictable. Ready to leave my southern accent behind and armed with my dream of becoming a journalist, I was determined to go somewhere where news actually happened.

But on the verge of leaving for college, news did happen--in my backyard. Within a matter of weeks, Louisiana was slammed by two massive hurricanes, Katrina and Rita.

The storms of 2005 weren't like the mild mannered hurricanes of my childhood, which were mostly all bark and no bite. Both Katrina and Rita made landfall as deadly category 3 storms during one of the worst Atlantic hurricane seasons on record. The double blows were much more than any of us had ever experienced.

Like most kids growing up in the Bayou State, I viewed hurricanes the way kids up north view snowstorms--an excuse to get out of school. Other hurricanes during my childhood either blew by with minimal damage or died somewhere off the Gulf Coast after triumphantly canceling school and causing evacuations.

Stranded two hours between oil giant Houston and culture rich New Orleans, my hometown of Lake Charles has a mixed heritage. The love child of tough Texas and spicy Louisiana, the town doesn't know if it twangs or drawls -- so it does both. But Cajun culture is hard to stamp out and Lake Charles is proof of that.

Having long ago accepted the risk of life on the Gulf Coast, we've always found a way to coexist with hurricanes. In elementary school, we learned to plot math graphs using hurricane charts.

As kids, we all found hurricanes exciting. A storm swirling far away in the Caribbean would catch people's attention days before landfall. Rumors of an immanent hit would begin. If small towns are known for creating gossip, then hurricanes amplify that by at least 100.

In every home the Weather Channel was kept on constantly, like a movie score of impending danger. Everyone became a meteorology expert. We would start to plot our days away from school with fingers crossed that it wouldn't be enough of a close call to have to evacuate, only to cancel class.

As the week goes on, the storm grows closer and the prediction cone narrows. My mom returns from the grocery store with water, canned food and batteries in addition to the usual lineup of sloppy joes and taco night supplies.

My dad begins taping windows, filling bathtubs with water and moving toys out of the backyard. My mom takes the framed photos of me and my sisters at our First Communions, wraps them in quilts and places them in the back of our Suburban. With a worried eye always on the Weather Channel, my dad starts calling hotels and relatives in Texas, looking for places to stay.

Two days before landfall, the long awaited call comes--school is canceled. Cue joy from the peanut gallery. Refusing to believe this will be anything but a fun-filled break from school, friends are called, plans are made and parents are ignored.

The next day, my dad calls from work, saying to be packed and ready to leave that afternoon. Now the big decisions have to be made--what to bring? My beloved doll, of course. A huge stack of books, half of which will later be intercepted and left behind by my mom. I've done this before. At the venerable old age of 12, this Louisiana girl is an evacuation pro.

I go with my dad to fill up the car with gas. Every gas station in town has a line around the block, and some put plastic bags over the pump handles to show they've run dry. It's the proverbial calm before the storm.

The lack of everyday activity makes the apprehension in the air palatable and tension hangs heavier in the thick, humid air than the impending storm clouds. Today, the entire state has limited priorities: hunker down or get out.

Loading up the car. This is the part I hate. Nothing will fit, and we have to leave things behind (in my sister Caroline's case, seven unmatched socks and an empty bottle of glitter hairspray. Always the know-it-all older sister, I roll my eyes at her hurricane incompetence.) My sisters and I battle over vehicular territory, lines are drawn and seats are chosen.

I glance behind us at our house. I've done this too many times to genuinely feel that it's the last time I'll see my home again, but it's hard not to let the thought skip through my mind. I bat it away, snap my Discman shut and focus on the fact that some girl is tearing up Justin Timberlake's heart. Clearly there are people with bigger problems than me.

I-10 is a parking lot. No highway system is equipped to handle the exodus of one quarter of the population. à

Darkness begins to fall, and the people of Lake Charles are reduced to a never-ending trail of headlights. There's nothing left to do but wait.

Katrina

2005 was different from the hurricanes of my childhood. The last few "big ones" had hit Florida, and Louisianans grew complacent, rarely bothering with the stress and trouble of evacuating. Even as category 5 monster Katrina shifted in the Gulf, we didn't worry. It would veer off towards Florida again--why get worked up?

But suddenly, Katrina was on Louisiana's doorstep, knocking hard. Last minute evacuation orders were issued for the eastern side of the state, and we watched residents of New Orleans and Baton Rouge stream in seeking refuge. Last minute shelters were set up and everyone made room in their houses for friends, family and strangers alike.

My Cajun side of the state is vastly different from the New Orleans side. The differences, like everything in Louisiana, all go back to food. You can always tell where someone's from by how they like their gumbo.

A few months earlier, I had graduated high school and begun an internship at the local paper, the American Press. I fell hard and fast for newspapers, and my summer internship quickly became the center of my world. Thanks to my manic desire to work, I became a reporter halfway through the summer and was churning out stories as fast as I received assignments.

As Katrina approached, we wrote the stereotypical hurricane stories that we had written for every hurricane. Fill in the blank journalism for a Gulf coast news staff. We'd done it all before, and thought little of it. The cable news networks were hyping Katrina as "the storm of the century," but Louisianans had heard that too many times before to believe it. Let the networks have their graphic laden disaster fun. They don't have to unpack a car crammed with belongings a week from now.

As the cliché dictates, August 29, 2005 was a gorgeous day in southwest Louisiana. On the western side of the storm, it was sunny and in a welcome respite from the bayou humidity, breezy.

In the newsroom, the TV was tuned to a live camera aimed at the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans. As Katrina's bitter winds blew, the old building began to quiver. Someone at the copy desk gasped, "The roof is peeling off!"

Reporters looked up from our keyboards and we exchanged nervous glances. Was Katrina more than Louisiana bargained for? Had the mighty Gulf of Mexico finally betrayed us? The sunshine becomes eerie. Deadline is looming, and the story is shifting on us.

The next day, Katrina's devastation becomes deadly clear as the levees along the Pontchartrain break. This is no ordinary storm. The pieces won't be picked up today, or tomorrow for that matter. No one is going back to New Orleans any time soon. New Orleans' perpetual balancing act on the bowl of Lake Pontchartrain has suddenly fallen apart.

Our editor calls us all into the conference room. He has that look in his eyes that reporters get when a disaster story breaks--the thrill of breaking news tempered with a veil of guilt over being excited at someone else's misfortune.

"This is the biggest story we've had in Louisiana in years. I want someone in the shelters every day talking to evacuees," he said.

Ever the annoyingly emphatic teenage workaholic, I'm ready to go after the story. I tag along to the shelter with one of the older reporters. He pulls a fifth of Jim Beam out of his glove compartment. "Want some reporter juice?" I'm fairly sure he's joking, but my sheltered Catholic schoolgirl self blushes and declines just in case.

We flash our press passes and enter the dark shelter. Makeshift cots are jammed side by side, topped with black plastic trash bags filled with what little is left of a lifetime. We split up, and begin to the search for the story.

Despite my constant attempts to appear professional in crisp button downs, pencil skirts and the shiny black pumps, the fear in my eyes is purely 18. I wait for someone to call me out, but it doesn't happen; despite their obvious exhaustion and worry, everyone wants to talk. Maybe it gives them some sense of control, a makeshift therapy session, anything to take their minds off the image of their homes succumbing to the water. I'm not really sure.

Three teenage girls from the West Bank neighborhood give me a shrill account of shooting breaking out among the rooftops where they escaped the rising waters.

A couple from uptown New Orleans tells me about their daughter who stayed behind in the city as a nurse. Her hospital wasn't evacuated before the levees broke, and they have no idea where she is or if she is safe. An old black man from the Ninth Ward's eyes fill with tears as he tells me the story of his wife's death from cancer a few days before the storm hit. Her body remains at a New Orleans funeral home, awaiting burial or the floodwaters--whichever claims her first. There's nothing he can do.

Each story I scribble on my rapidly filling notebook is more heartbreaking than that last. The mask of confidence I wore when I walked into the shelter has long since melted. I'm overwhelmed, thrown into a situation beyond my years. At 18, I'm in the midst of a story some reporters never find during their entire career and I don't want to regret a single written word.

Armed with my overflowing notebook, I try to do every evacuee's story justice. I power on through deadline, taking on more stories and editing mine for the late edition. Around 1 a.m., the Red Bull well beneath my desk runs dry and I fall asleep on the tattered yellow couch outside the newsroom.

The following weeks blend together in similar blur of work. I'm becoming the journalist I wanted to be--all without leaving home. And for the first time, leaving Louisiana is the last thing I want to do.

Rita

I grudgingly left for California a few weeks later, still riding the adrenaline high of Katrina's floodwaters. I had no idea I was leaving behind the biggest story to break in Lake Charles in decades.

I was asleep in my dorm room when my cell phone rang. "We're under mandatory evacuation orders, " my dad said in his calm, measured doctor voice. Hurricane Rita had suddenly veered towards Lake Charles overnight.

Louisiana had been so wrapped up in the aftermath of Katrina that we hadn't seen Rita brewing in the Gulf, and now it was our side of the state's turn to evacuate.

I try to go through my day like the other freshman--getting lost on campus, bumbling through classes, awkwardly making friends. But my mind is back home, packing up the car with my dad. Across the country, safe from the threat of Rita, I feel helpless.

With classes finally over, I go back to my dorm and park myself in front of the TV. The cable news networks have ramped up the hype, eager for the next Katrina to spike their ratings. I feel betrayed, as if the networks are gambling my hometown's fate in exchange for viewers. Wipe that grin off your face! This is my home! I want to yell. But that was me two weeks ago, dashing after Katrina stories. Karma is a hurricane named Rita.

Many hours later, my family makes it out of Louisiana and into eastern Texas. In a separate car, my grandparents stubbornly refused to leave until late, only to be rerouted to the North instead of the West. They cross the Texas-Louisiana border hours before Rita makes landfall.

Me? I'm smack dab in the midst of a reenactment of Animal House as newly independent freshman are unleashed on the world of college binge drinking.

I'm still glued to the TV screen, watching newscasters being blown about the rooftops of downtown Lake Charles buildings.

My new friends try, but don't quite understand. This is my home. I left it behind, trusted that it would all be there when I got back.

Now it's blowing away and I can't do anything about it. All I can do is nervously click buttons on the remote to flip between news channels and wish I could exert the same over control my life that I have over the TV.

Homecoming

Three months later, I return home to a very different Lake Charles. When I board my connecting flight in Houston, Rita is the name on the lips of every passenger.

After three months as an outsider a world away in California, I'm suddenly among people with the same thing on their mind as me. But I don't want to hear about it any more. I want to go home.

Over the next week, I drive through town, searching for something that has stayed the same. There's not much. Our roof is beyond repair. Several houses in my neighborhood are crushed by heavy oak trees. The pool I spent countless hours at with the swim team is damaged and full of debris. Ruined furniture, rotting refrigerators and stripped carpet are on every curb.

My grandparents' yard is stacked with tree limbs, completely obscuring any view of the house like an urban tree graveyard.

Perhaps the most insignificant damage of all hits me the hardest--my Orlando Bloom poster in my childhood bedroom is waterlogged due to our ruined roof. Hurricanes have no respect, even for teenage heartthrobs.

But some things haven't changed. My family, my friends, we were all still there, still standing. That was more than our friends in New Orleans could say.

The years to come would be rough for all of us. But for now, there was nothing to do but push the hurt aside, leave the mildewed couch by the curb and start life again.

Contact Sarah Yokubaitis at syokubaitis@scu.edu.