She's home from Hurricane Katrina

Aaryn Markham

She's home from
Hurricane Katrina

Until a week ago, Aaryn Markham was a resident of New Orleans, a city she loved because of the friendliness of the people, the kindness of her neighbors, its many festivals -- its joie de vivre -- the Big Easy. New Orleans was a city the former Brockport resident chose to make her own, and dearly loved in part because of appealing climate -- steamy hot and humid.

She was very happy living there. She was successful at her job as a banker for AMSouth, she was surrounded with special friends who moved there to join her, had a charming apartment in Napoleon, one of the older sections of the city across from a beautiful park, and, she was about to start fall semester classes for a degree in occupational therapy - an exciting new career path she anticipated eagerly.

Then came Hurricane Katrina.

Like most of us, Aaryn and her friends watched the TV news and the Weather Channel reports and predictions about the major storm headed toward New Orleans. They knew, as all New Orleans knew, the city was endangered by the projected path of Katrina.

"Everybody knew the city was unsafe and likely to flood if hit by a powerful hurricane," she said. So, even before the mayor's office started issuing warnings on TV, Aaryn and her friends, Betsy, her freshman year roommate from the University of Buffalo, and Robin Ball, also from Brockport, her best friend from high school, knew they had to get out.

Saturday morning (August 30) they made reservations at a hotel in Lafayette, an hour's drive outside the city, planning to leave Sunday morning, in two cars, one dog, four cats, a few days' worth of clothes and some personal papers and photographs.

Aaryn Markham (AM): Later in the day on Saturday, the situation got worse and the mayor called for everyone to evacuate so we decided to leave right away. But when we called ahead to our hotel in Lafayette to find out how soon we could check in they said they were not honoring any reservations because they were already full. So, at that point we had nowhere to go.

Westside News (WN): So? What did you do?

AM: We had a friend living in Houston who had called us earlier offering to help us find a place. We hadn't planned to go that far but when our hotel in Lafayette fell through we called her and said, "Oh my God, please, we have to leave now and have nowhere to go. Thank God, she found us a place, the Drury Inn in Sugarland, Texas.

WN: What was the weather like then, on Saturday?

AM: It was fine. You'd never know anything was happening. I parked my car in a garage, Betsy and Robin drove, we started out about one o'clock Sunday morning. The contra flow was already in effect, all lanes out-going, no incoming lanes. They started that about 4 o'clock Saturday. There was a little slow-stop until we got to the highway, but from then on we drove straight through to Baton Rouge and on to Houston in about eight hours. Later we heard people who set out two hours after us, they were on the road 16 hours.

WN: What happened once you were safe in Houston?

AM: The people at the Drury Inn were wonderful. They gave us two suites so we could keep my dog and the cats in one room. We were glued to the TV to follow what was going on. Nobody was sleeping, we were so stressed. But, we could only stay there one night and had to move. We found a place at a Days Inn. There we had only one room, a very small room. I remember watching on the news this horrific event happening in New Orleans, shooting at the police - that was really upsetting - people looting to the point they were stealing fishing poles. They were just stealing to steal so that was ... watching the news was just making us sick to our stomach.

WN: When did you decide what to do next?

AM: We realized we weren't going to get back into the city for a long enough time and that we couldn't afford to live in a hotel. The flooding was getting worse instead of better. Everything we owned was underwater. We knew once the levees broke and the city flooded, that was it. Tuesday we realized we weren't going to be able to go back. My friend Robin's house was under water, we knew that, so we were feeling really bad for her. Betsy and I, our apartments weren't under water right away, so there was still some hope. But when the second levee breached and water really started pouring into the city is when we knew. We had to make a long term plan.

WN: Which was?

AM: Well, I'd been talking to my parents (Patrick and Bonnie Markham live on West Avenue in Brockport) and decided to go home. We set out at 7 a.m. Thursday morning (September 4). It seemed like a huge step backward. We each had such a great life there, in a great city, we had all our things in order, everything was going right. Driving away was just like, 'back to the beginning', starting over. That was really depressing. I loved my life. I was really happy. It was so hard to picture myself coming back to Brockport to live with my parents, with nothing, starting all over again.

WN: How was the drive back from Houston?

AM: The drive back was very stressful, Nobody had been sleeping, the cats and my dog were fighting, Robin had to drive almost the whole way because I had a pinched nerve in my back and couldn't drive. We drove north, up through Oklahoma City, and Missouri away from the east because so many evacuees were there we wouldn't be able to get a hotel. We arrived in Brockport late Friday night. I was relieved. At least I had a place to stay for more than one day. It was then I realized I was kind of in shock. Thinking about what we'd lost, what we could do now? I don't expect to get anything back ... It was very hard.