It Takes A Nation: How Strangers Became Family

Excerpt

Marietta, Georgia

Melanie James (Evacuee)

Ellen Lytle (HurricaneHousing Host)

David Eichler (Ellen’s Brother)

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 “Nothing can be worse then waking up and everything you have is gone. Only thing worse would be dying but at least then you’d be in heaven.”

Katrina
Superdome
Hurricane Housing
Starting Over

Melanie James: I reside in New Orleans at 5436 Chartres, better known as the lower Ninth Ward or the C2C, across from the Industrial Canal. I’ve been a dental assistant there for the last seven years, lived a pretty normal life. I have two daughters, Brionne and Milan Miller, eleven and nine years old. They attended public school in the lower Ninth Ward. I lived and worked in the Gentilly area, not too far from the Lakefront. Everything was pretty normal routine, everyday living.

I remember hearing on the news that the storm was coming. My aunt stayed on a street, ironically, called Flood Street, which is a block away from my house, in a two-story home. So we figured, well, even if the water rises she can go up in the attic. I have two daughters. They evacuated the Friday before the storm with their father in Mississippi, so I knew that they were okay. Me and their dad aren’t together anymore, so they left with him and his wife.

I myself went to my friend Leroy’s home on the other side of the Canal. It’s still the Ninth Ward, but I thought I would be safe there.

About 4 a.m. Monday morning I woke up. There was no electricity, the lights were already out and we could hear the wind gusting. I thought, God what’s going on? So we stepped outside on the porch and up the street you could see something approaching. It was a refrigerator – a refrigerator floating down the road in some sort of tidal surge of water, debris, and water just roaring in. Water was falling from the sky.

And I said, “Oh my God, that’s not rain.” Because you can smell the water and you can taste the water. I mean, if you’re from New Orleans you know the difference between the rain and the lake and the canal. It all smells different, it tastes different. I’m like, “God, that’s the lake.”

We went to the first floor and began putting sand bags by the front door. The water had already started coming in, so my friend suggested that we get stuff off the floor. And so we went into the adjacent bedroom and started putting things on top of the dresser. And when we turned around that water was to our knees. I remember saying, “We’ve been out here like an hour.” Leroy said “No, Mel, it’s only been twenty minutes.”  

I told him, “We’re gonna drown.”

It’s only been twenty minutes and the water’s already up to our knees? We’re gonna drown.

And all I can think is, Where’s all this water coming from? I thought it was only gonna be five to ten feet of water. The storm is passing east of the city so we shouldn’t have been hit by heavy rain, heavy flooding, any of these things. So we went upstairs and we began gathering items. They said on the news to make sure you have a hammer, something that you can break through the roof with in case you need to break out of the attic. So we found a hammer.

Within the first hour of the storm the entire first floor was covered with water. So we made a marker on the second floor wall where we were, and decided that once the water gets to this level, then we’re gonna have to move to the attic. A one point I was gathering items and I was looking out the window and I saw the roof rip right off the house next door. It just ripped right off. And I just started panicking.

There was a woman and a child who was with us, who Leroy rescued because her roof had collapsed on her. Well, we had heard her screaming for help. So he took a tire, swam through the water and put her baby, a one-year-old child, inside of the tire and brought them back to his home.

At this point, the water was almost up to the second floor of the house. All the windows were blown out, so the wind was rushing through the house, and the water started dumping into the house through the open windows.

We went up to the attic.  We’re all standing there in the attic, listening to the water rise, hanging onto a hammer. And that attic had a storm roof with big orange rust stone shingles, so even with a hammer, how you gonna break out?

By Monday night we can see helicopters flying. We lit a chair on fire on the porch to try to get their attention. But they were flying across the canal, by the lower Ninth Ward, which was adjacent to where I was. I was like, “Why aren’t they stopping?” They didn’t stop.

Tuesday morning we can see people starting to wade through the water. The water was real black. A lot of oil and gas or whatever it was in it and dead animals. It just gave you a real dark eerie feeling.  I saw some army trucks about three blocks down on St. Claude Avenue. And I’m yelling to the neighbors, “Where are the army trucks going?” And they said, “Well, in order for you to get help you gotta swim to them, because they can’t come up the streets where we are.” So I swam down St. Claude Avenue to a school where the army trucks were picking people up. I’m not sure how deep the water was, but it was definitely more than ten feet.

The Superdome

I just swam. There were downed power lines, so I avoided them. It was very scary because I couldn’t see through the water. The water was black and dirty. At that point I was by myself. I chose to leave the home where I was with my friend. I wanted to go to the Superdome, because I thought I’d feel safer at the Superdome. You know – we’re in this home, we don’t have any food, we don’t have any water and the water is still rising. Seemed safer to go to the Dome.

I didn’t know at this point where my family was, because I left my mom, my two aunts, and my uncle across the canal in the lower Ninth Ward.

I just figured being across the canal, because of the levee breaching, you know, what if the levee breaks? How we gonna get out? There’s no way we could cross over to St. Claude Bridge to get on the other side. My family had stayed, so at that point, I pretty much assumed that my family dead, to be honest with you. I assumed my family dead.

So I got to the truck pick-up. And they transported us to the Superdome, just riding on the trucks through the city. Seeing the devastation that had taken place within a matter of hours, it. . .it was horrific.

You could see people wandering on the sidewalks looking for help, and I was hoping that they could have come with us, you know, because there was just a sense of lostness on everyone’s face. Their faces seemed to say, “What do we do? Where do we go, where is the help? How did you all get on a truck?” People literally screaming, “Can we come with you?! Help! Help! I want to get on!” But you had to get to these particular meeting spots in order to be picked up to be transported to the Superdome. It’s not like they were just driving by and picking people up on the street, so you actually had to know about them and get to them.

When I walked through the doors of the Superdome I instantly began crying. Because I could see the chaos behind the bars. . . and just the smell that was coming out of the Dome. . .and it was the fear of being alone, not knowing at this point what had happened to my family.

I befriended a National Guard and actually slept close to their sleeping quarters to feel safe. I befriended another gentleman and we slept in shifts to watch each other’s belongings. Because in the event you were to go to sleep, someone would just walk up and take your things.

There were several rumors circulating in reference to murders and rapes, but I can tell you first-hand that on the first day a ten-year-old girl was raped and killed and found in a bathroom. And from that point on, crime just escalated. The National Guard had no control. I mean how can you control 60,000 people, when you only have 300 to 400 National Guards? You’re talking about murderers and drug dealers and drug addicts and rapists among a group of normal civilized people. They were just a small percentage, but they caused major chaos for everybody else.

Dave Eichler: What really worries me is that the news is just skewing the facts and the figures as best they can, and you know now there’s a big push to try to play down the rapes and the murders in the Dome. I mean, there’s living proof. They’re 60,000 people in there, do you really think that you’re going to be able to spread a lie like this and say this never happened? They’re saying there’s no real proof of any of this. Well, of course there’s no real proof. There was no one to report it to. You got 300 National Guard watching 60,000 people, and no ammunition in their guns. . . .

Melanie Lytle: And no right and no authority to arrest or seize.

Dave: There was no one to report it to.

Melanie: On Thursday morning, at 5 a.m., a soldier tapped me on me leg and informed me that the National Guard have an order to pull out because the generators were about to run out of fuel. And if the generators went out, it would just be mad chaos. I guess somebody thought that their safety was more important than ours. I began to cry at that moment. The soldier apologized to me and gave me his knife. He told me the best thing I could do is find somewhere to hide it until active duty could get there, which would take about another two to three days.

And I said, “How could ya’ll leave us? They’re gonna kill us in here. Please don’t leave us.” Well, luckily the generators didn’t go out.

Ellen:  That soldier called later to check on her when she was here.

Melanie: He did. You know, it’s ironic. I actually know a lot about the Superdome because my mom was a tour guide there for twenty-six years. She had just retired from the Dome, so I knew the ins and outs, the hallways, the ramps, the back alleyways. The National Guardsman told me, “If we got to pull out, we’re gonna go to Gate A.” He said, “I can’t say you can come with us, but I can’t stop you from running behind us, so if you can haul ass and make it to Gate A, you might be able to get out.” I’m like, “I’m going to hold onto the helicopter leg – I’ll do whatever I got to do. Y’all are not gonna leave me in this Dome to die with these people.” I didn’t come to the Superdome to die.

But the generators didn’t go out and we couldn’t leave. We couldn’t leave the Dome. And I think that’s what caused a lot of problems. Because there were people who wanted to leave, becoming very loud and angry and pushing barricades, because there were barricades in place so that you could not exit out of certain doors.

Ellen: They locked them in.

Melanie: The National Guard was posted with their M16s. And then barricades were placed. So at that point people just wanted to leave. We had been in there for so long, the food and water was scarce because as trucks were coming in, you had looters who would take over these trucks, taking the water and selling the water for two dollars a bottle, and taking the MREs, the Military Ready-to-Eats. So it’s not like there was a system, get in line and you can get your food, or order of any kind.

Where I was, someone would pass by with a box of food, and as a family take an entire box. So you just have to wait until the next round comes around. You had to be vigilant when it came down to just trying to eat and drink. The bathrooms were not in existence then. You used the bathroom publicly. I had to use the bathroom publicly. And the water. . .look, I knew, just from being in the medical field, not to drink the water. But I did brush my teeth with the water on the first day. There was running water on the first floor of the Dome on Tuesday. I can remember seeing people filling up bottles with water and I’m saying, y’all please don’t drink that water. I’m like, why isn’t the National Guard telling the people “don’t drink the water”? The water is contaminated. But we were not informed. Why didn’t they put signs up?

I mean, what was the purpose of the National Guard? Were they medics basically, just to take care of the sick and the elderly? But not to inform, protect, or any of those things? I don’t know. They said they were powerless.

Ellen:  She brushed her teeth just that one time, and then she was sick for a day- and-a-half.

Melanie: I caught that mass virus that was going around, with the vomits and diarrhea, just from brushing my teeth with that water. I went to the medical clinic to get some type of IV fluid or something, some Imodium to stop the vomiting and the diarrhea.  But they had closed down because there were just too many patients and they had run out of supplies. So I just dealt with it and used the bathroom outside.

They had been announcing all week, “The buses are on their way; the buses are gonna be here.” And we’re constantly looking around, hoping for those buses. Finally on Friday they told us to start lining up – it was somewhere about 8 a.m. – and the buses would be here. So of course, it turned into a riot. You can’t tell a bunch of people who been locked up and literally in a cage for that long, “Okay, now the buses are here, but we only want to take women and children and elderly first. And we want you all to line up quietly and peaceful.” It’s not gonna work. So that turned into a riot. It was a horrible experience just trying to actually get on the bus.

The National Guard had assigned me an elderly woman from a nursing home who had Alzheimer’s. So that’s how I ended up getting on the bus in one of the first loads, because I had a senior citizen with me. I believe that’s how a lot of families got separated, because people started grabbing other people’s children or grabbing someone elderly just so they could say “Hey, I need to get on this bus first.”

They transported us to Houston, and the Houston Police Department came on the bus and told us we could not get off. They reported that rapes and lootings and riots had begun in the Astrodome as well.

So at that point I don’t want to go to Houston Astrodome. I don’t want to go through this all over again. I felt like God brought me through the storm but when I got to the Superdome I felt like I was left there to die. You know, that was one of the worst experiences. I was sitting in the seats on Wednesday in the Dome when the National Guard had gotten shot. And he couldn’t even return fire because his weapon wasn’t loaded. It took another National Guardsman to return fire and kill this person in front of thousands of people in the middle of the football field. And I was there when that happened. Sitting in the seats.

 It makes you wonder: how did someone get in there with a weapon, when we were searched when we were first brought into the Superdome? Any type of glass items, if we had razors or anything, they took it out of your bags. I even had a rattail comb, they broke the tip off because that could have been used for a weapon.

So it was pretty scary just to think, well, how did these people even get in with weapons or drugs for that matter? They did enforce rules at first, you know, no cigarette smoking, no drug use, but after so long. . . .

Hurricane Housing

Dave: How about the hot dog stand?

Melanie: Yeah, there was a hot dog stand set up on the Plaza Level, where they were selling drugs from that hot dog stand. But you know, how could you stop someone from doing these things if you don’t have the authority to do it?

In any case, I was not going to go to the Houston Astrodome. So I just began walking down the Houston highway. There were a group of men in a truck who were giving out water and juices and crackers. I basically walked up to them. I was crying, distraught, confused, lost, and I just asked them if I could use a cell phone. And they said, “Where are you trying to go to?” I was just trying to call someone from my family, to hear a voice, to see if they were alive because I haven’t heard from anyone. So they offered to bring me to the Greyhound bus station and buy me a ticket to wherever I was going.

I told them I had a cousin in Baton Rouge; that I needed to get to Baton Rouge. But unfortunately the buses only brought me to Lake Charles, Louisiana. So from Lake Charles to Baton Rouge, I hitchhiked a ride. I stayed in Baton Rouge two days at my cousin’s apartment. But after two days, I didn’t want to be in Baton Rouge. I didn’t feel safe there. Curfews were being enforced because crime instantly went up. I tried the Red Cross Shelter there but it was overwhelmed with people.

So from there I went to Hammond, Louisiana, to a girlfriend of mine. Unfortunately in Hammond, FEMA had not arrived there yet, so getting aid or assistance wasn’t good. So they brought me to Amite, Louisiana, where I was able to apply for food stamps. And that took a forty-eight-hour process.

While I was in Hammond, I went on the Internet and just typed in “hurricane housing.” Because at this point, I’m homeless. I don’t have any food. I don’t have any shelter. I just need to get somewhere. I didn’t feel safe in Louisiana at all, didn’t feel safe nowhere. And I submitted an application, told them about myself, my situation. There were ads set up saying what someone had to offer. Ellen responded by calling me.

Ellen:  I get a weekly email from MoveOn.org. They sent an email about HurricaneHousing. It was just a general call, “Does anybody want to help?” Giving money to Red Cross is wonderful, but it’s detached, it’s not an act of participation. I’m a college professor. I teach graphic design. I have a teaching salary so I don’t have that much money. But I have an extra room and an extra bath and if I could just help one person that would be doing something a little more personal than just sending a check to an anonymous organization.

It was just gut reaction. Like, “I can do this.” And I remember at the same time, I was watching the news, just dumbfounded. Watching the government fly over the top of this tragedy and nobody going down to see what was going on. It made me genuinely angry, and it was aggravating to just sit, stand by and see nothing happen. It was like the whole system was falling apart right in front of us.

So I put an ad up and said, “I am in Marietta, we have bus service, live two blocks from the bus line, and I can take a mother and child or two children or single person.” I posted, and Melanie responded to a couple of them, and I responded back first. And I think you found out there were good jobs in Marietta, so that sounded like a good place to go?

Melanie: Yeah. Because I had a normal life before the storm. I was career-oriented, so just to wake up and not have everything that you once had is something that you just can’t imagine. You go to sleep one night and you wake up the next morning and it’s all gone. And it’s no going back. No going back at all.

Ellen: We crossed phone calls for at least a day or so. It’s because the cell phones, the towers and stuff, were down all over Louisiana.

You can tell a lot about a person talking to them for a couple minutes. And Melanie wrote very clearly in her note, “I wish someone would please help me.” Just very honest about asking for help. People usually only do that they’re seriously in trouble.

I can never stand by and let bad things happen to other people. (laughs) Yeah, it’s got me into trouble in the past. Funny way to live your life. Sometimes it has repercussions.

But I could just tell from talking to her that she was ready to start over. She was just very clear about what she needed to do. She had a plan. She wasn’t lost other than what had happened to her.

Melanie: So we met up in Livingston, Alabama. We met a gas station.

Dave: I went and helped with the driving. I am my sister’s brother, so I’m a chronic do-gooder as well. So when she said, “Let’s go, we’re leaving tomorrow morning,” I just said, “Okay. I’ll be there.” So we loaded up the car and drove out and picked her up.

Ellen:  She didn’t have anything but just one little bag, one that her friend had given her, so there wasn’t much to pick up.

She told us the stories on the way there, and we were both shocked at how dramatic they were compared to what we had been hearing on the news. And she was so exhausted. She was telling us what was going on and just right in the middle of a sentence she just fell asleep. And David and I looked at each other and thought, oh my God. Because it was ten times worse than anything we saw on the news. And I’m sure she didn’t even have the worst experience.

I put boxes of Kleenex all over the apartment so she could just grab a Kleenex if she got upset. She was so numb. I said, “If it was me, first thing I’d want to do is sit down and have a good cry.” And she said, “I’ve been crying for two weeks. I’m completely numb.” She only cried one time. So I’m thinking, It’s going to catch up with her later and the whole thing is just gonna come down on her.

Melanie: It was comforting. But at the same time it still felt so empty, because I didn’t know at that point where my mom was, my aunts, my cousins or anything. I was still presuming that they were all deceased. I went onto the Red Cross registry once I got here, to try to look up family members, but no one’s names had been registered. I’m like, “God, it’s been two weeks – how do I know they’re still alive? What do I do?” And as much as Ellen tried to make me comfortable, there were nights when I still cried in my room. But I knew from this point on I had to do something for myself, because I had not received any assistance except for food stamps, which is limited. And I was getting the run-around from FEMA, Red Cross. The 1-800 number practically just didn’t work. I thought it was a bogus number.

Ellen:  It kept saying, “This is a non-working number.” The number that they put on television that said, “Call here”? Well, it was not a working number.

Melanie: I remember when we first got here, Ellen offered to take me swimming. I said, “Oh, no.” I didn’t realize I had a phobia with water. It took me maybe two weeks or more to take a full bath.

Ellen:  She wouldn’t take a full bath or a shower.

Melanie: Water to my ankles.

Ellen: She didn’t want the shower water hitting her face. She was terrified of water running on her face. She said, “I’m just going to take a bath in an inch of water.”

Melanie: I talked to my mother two weeks ago for the first time. She had been transported to a shelter in Arkansas. They had been rescued! Yes, all are accounted for. We are just very spread out right now. My daughters are with their dad in Columbus, Mississippi. We thought that was best for them, since he’s a school teacher and was able to find work, and his wife is a nurse. His life has changed too. He had his own brass jazz band and his way of life is totally altered. But I need to get my girls back to be with me. I miss them.

I’m still not comfortable with being here. There’s never gonna be a place like home, you know. Just the whole concept of this happening is unimaginable to me. The whole lifestyle is different here. It’s basically a culture shock. New Orleans was known for its jazz, its music, its love of fun. It was a close-knit family and community. Here it’s very multicultural and it’s just hard getting to know people and trying to figure out your way around town.

Ellen is definitely my support system here. Through Ellen I do have an extended family now, her friends and family.

Ellen: I put out an email to everybody who I knew was of a like mind, and said, “All points bulletin, here’s what’s going on. Here’s what Melanie needs.” Everybody just responded back with emails, and I got two suits in a size twelve she can wear on interviews. And I called all my friends and made them give me Target gift certificates and we’re going to take her shopping. But it took a lot of people to just take care of one person. It’s so over-simplified that you can give someone a couple of food stamps and then they should be okay now.

Starting Over

Melanie: I’ve sent out over fifty applications. I was a dental assistant in New Orleans. I have experience. But I didn’t even hear back. Why don’t they hire us? I think they are afraid we’ll go back to New Orleans, or we’re stigmatized as criminals.

I’m not going back to New Orleans. Where I lived, it’s not even a living area anymore. We paid $475 a month for a two-bedroom and now it’s a thousand a month. So I can’t go back. It was a low-income city, and the landlords are doubling the rent. The mayor said legally they aren’t breaking any laws, so they can’t stop it. And I wonder about everyone from back home. Did they make it? There were so many elderly there. Where are they now?

So I can’t go back.  Right now I’m staying in an apartment through the Red Cross

I still haven’t gotten any assistance from FEMA. I sent them a copy of my lease and I turned in my application on September 7. Still nothing. They just want us to go away. If I hadn’t heard of MoveOn.org, I don’t know where I’d be.

I’m okay though. I’ve been writing songs. I’m a spoken word artist. I write poetry, try to get my thoughts out, you know. My friend and I, we put a microphone in the bathroom and record songs.

Ellen: I told her, “You can stay here with me for months.” I know she feels like she’s imposing. She is not used to not having anything and having people say, “Here have some money, here have this, have that.” I can see it in her face; she’s very uncomfortable. It’s like taking charity or something for the first time in your life. It’s demeaning and demoralizing to be put in that position and she’s not that kind of person. I don’t blame her for being uncomfortable.

Melanie: It’s true. But once we connected, it did give me a more positive outlook. I just didn’t feel safe, and through HurricaneHousing I was able to stay in a safe place and at least get a new lease on life and start over. Even though it may seem like I still don’t have so many things, I’m grateful for what I do have. It’s just good to know that if I do fall short, I have someone to call. Because right now my family is in the same boat that I am in. We’re all still waiting on some type of public assistance and we can’t rely on each other. We can’t hold each other up right now. So it’s the help of other people, privately, who are really making a difference.

Ellen: I like the company. I’m perfectly happy to have her stay here forever.

Melanie: She teaches me different things about the city, you know, landmarks and kudzu which is that. . . .

Ellen: Kudzu, that creature plant that eats. . . .

Melanie: Creature plants, they eat everything up.

Ellen:  What sweet tea is. . . .

Melanie: They’re serious about sweet tea out here. I mean, you order tea at a restaurant, sweet or unsweet? How sweet do you want it, you know? It’s just small things I miss, like going to the grocery store and asking for red beans and ham, things that we ordinarily have in New Orleans.

Although Katrina has devastated many of our lives, at least mine, it has given me a fresh start, to start over again. And hopefully this time, the second time around it’ll be better.

I don’t have anything to return to. I lived in the little Ninth Ward and once Rita came the levee broke and it re-flooded the area where I once lived. So I don’t have a home to go back to.

I’m going to stay in Georgia. Just where I don’t know. I like Georgia, but I don’t know exactly where I’m going to stay.

Ellen says, “Stay with me, stay with me.” But I was independent before. I have goals I have to meet and I have two little girls. They’re worried. They say, “Mom, do you have food?”

FEMA said, “We’ll assign you a trailer.” But I say, “Where will I put it?” I don’t have any land. They say, “We’ll send you to where one is.” But those trailers aren’t in industrial areas. They’re in rural areas and there are no jobs there. So okay, ya’ll sign me up for it but if my number comes up I don’t have anywhere to put a trailer. And a trailer? I don’t want to be blown away after what I’ve been through. Sometimes I think I don’t want to be anywhere on the Gulf Coast.

Nothing can be worse then waking up and everything you have is gone. Only thing worse would be dying but at least then you’d be in heaven.

Ellen:  You know that phrase, “It takes a village”? It’s gonna take a village for each person to fix this. It’s gonna take a whole group of people just to put one person back together.

Dave: It’s gonna take the whole country to put this whole thing back together.