Evelyn Turner did not know what to do with her husband's body.
Xavier Bowie, 57, died Tuesday morning from complications from lung cancer. He had been diagnosed in December. The couple, together for 16 years, had run out of bottled oxygen. Floodwaters made it impossible to retrieve more.
"We did CPR. We did everything we could," Turner said. "We didn't think the water was going to come up this high."
Someone told Turner to call the city. The person who answered told Turner to take Bowie's body to New Orleans City Hall.
Turner's home was not flooded, but her neighborhood was. So she wrapped her husband in light green bedsheets with flower prints. Then, Turner and some friends fashioned a raft, lashing together sheets of plywood and interior siding.
Turner floated her husband on the raft, five miles from their home to the corner of St. Bernard and St. Cloud streets. There, a man in a truck picked them up and drove them rest of the way.
They laid Bowie gently down in the grass in front of city hall.
Multimedia: Continuing fallout