Katrina survivors look back

Five years ago this week, Andrew Urquhart stood in Hurricane Katrina floodwaters in suburban New Orleans with his father and a basket of food.

They had canned ravioli, Rice Krispie Treats, bread, Pop Tarts, anything they could grab from the grocery store's quickly emptying shelves to feed their family of six, including three children with diabetes.

A police boat came up the street. An officer with a megaphone ordered the teenager and his father to put the food back in the store.

“We waited for the boat to leave, and then we started walking home,” said Urquhart, now 21 and a college student in Omaha. “We were like, I guess we've got to steal food, because it's desperate measures. Some people were actually looting, like DVDs and stuff. We just needed food. We had to do what we had to do to survive.”

Five years later, Urquhart is among the many thousands of people who were displaced by Katrina and remain dispersed around the nation. No one really knows what has happened to the more than 3,000 people who were evacuated or moved on their own to Nebraska or Iowa. Many are assumed to have since returned to Louisiana or Mississippi.

Many others, like the lead musicians in a New Orleans band that had been transplanted to Lincoln, have left Nebraska for other states.

Some, like Urquhart and Omahan Linda Hope, have made new lives in Nebraska.

Representatives of several government and nonprofit agencies in Nebraska and Iowa said this week that they had not tracked Katrina survivors since 2006 or 2007.

Sitting on the steps of his family's Omaha home Monday, Andrew Urquhart said he can't believe it has been five years already.

Katrina flooded his home, and the family blew apart in the aftermath of the 2005 disaster.

They lived in the New Orleans suburb of Kenner, La. Family members rode out the hurricane in their house without injury. But they quickly ran out of food, and without electricity or water they began to fear for their lives.

Urquhart and two younger siblings had Type 1 diabetes, requiring insulin shots several times daily. They couldn't cool their insulin, and didn't know where they could get more insulin, or food for that matter.

After a few days, the family made its way to a relative's home in LaPlace, La., where they had electricity. Soldiers there were distributing military rations called MREs, meals ready to eat.

Andrew, then 16, his two sisters and his brother started school in LaPlace, but his mother soon moved them to Omaha, where her mother and grandmother lived.

Andrew's father helped them move but did not stay. He returned to Louisiana, and the parents have since divorced. Looking back, Andrew said, the family might already have been coming apart before the storm.

In Omaha, he suddenly found himself a stranger in a strange place.

“When I first came up here, I wanted to go back to Louisiana so bad,” Urquhart said, shoving a mop of brown hair off his black plastic glasses while sitting on his mom's front steps Monday. “I was really anxious. I didn't really know anybody here.”

He enrolled at Omaha Northwest High School.

“Some people really made me feel welcome,” Urquhart said. “When they heard what had happened, they had somebody giving me money. I was grateful. I wasn't asking for anything, but they wanted to help.”

He has remained friends with several of those classmates after graduating from Northwest.

Linda Hope had a similar experience with Omahans. She and her husband, James Gardner, had taken a bus to Omaha after being evacuated from their damaged public housing apartment in Gulfport, Miss.

The couple rode a bus with other survivors to Omaha. Though his wife missed relatives back in Mississippi, Gardner insisted on staying in Omaha. “He liked it here,” said Hope, 51. “I did, too.”

In Omaha, a counselor named Teela Mickles helped the couple find a place to live. They couldn't work, Hope said, because of disabilities. Gardner got sick and died last year. Hope tried to move back to Gulfport, but returned to Omaha after it didn't work out.

Is Omaha home now? “Yeah, for right now,” Hope said. “I tell my mom I'm not coming home unless someone is dying or sick.”

Two high-profile Katrina survivors in Lincoln recently moved to Texas. Roland Lawes, who with his wife led the Executive Steel band in Lincoln, said they moved to Austin a month ago because they weren't getting enough gigs in Nebraska.

For Urquhart, things are better now than five years ago, but life is still tough.

“I do what I have to do, but to be honest, it's kind of bad,” he said.

His mother can't work. He can't drive because of anxiety problems, and his diabetes is a struggle. His Omaha grandmother and great-grandmother died in the past two years.

Still, he manages. He gets to his Metropolitan Community College classes and doctor's appointments by bus.

Urquhart has traveled to New Orleans to spend summers with his father and has seen the city being slowly rebuilt. This summer, Urquhart said, it felt good, and it hurt, to see his old house repainted and looking good on a street full of refurbished homes.

Monday in Omaha, Urquhart showed his three tattoos. One on each shoulder memorializes his grandmother and great-grandmother. On his back is a gold and black fleur-de-lis, symbol of New Orleans and its NFL Saints.

“That,” he said, “is for the city where I grew up.”

Contact the writer:

444-1057, christopher.burbach@owh.com

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