Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Hurricane Katrina

A journey to normalcy

Eric Brown lived through some of the worst of Katrina's devastation. Now he's starting a new life in Pinellas County.

By PAUL SWIDER
Published September 21, 2005

GULFPORT - "When I woke up this morning, it took me awhile to realize I wasn't still on the roof," said Eric Brown. "I just keep reliving it in my dreams."

Now with a roof over his head, Brown recalls four harrowing days he and colleagues lived on the roof of their apartment building on Canal Street, front-row witnesses to the misery, looting and degradation that was post-Katrina New Orleans. After that ordeal and a cross-country odyssey that saw even more pain, Brown now finds himself on the verge of a new life in Gulfport. He can smile now, albeit halting and cautious, because he feels he has come to a better place in so many ways.

"I thought I had it good in New Orleans before," said the 34-year-old Navy and Marine veteran. "I had nice material things there. But the people I have met here have guided me in directions I could not have achieved on my own."

It started simply but built into one trauma after another.

Brown had to work the Saturday before the storm hit, managing the office of a drug and alcohol rehabilitation clinic of which he was a successful graduate. He got stuck late that day and by the time he made it home, all his evacuation rides had left town. Though radio reports were heralding the worst storm ever, Brown and 30 others in his building had no way out, so they hunkered down.

The hurricane itself was uneventful, mainly because his building was shielded by larger structures. After the storm passed that Monday, he thought the worst was over, the runoff would recede and he'd go back to work. But Canal Street soon became a canal as waters rose an inch every hour. By that evening, Brown had to gather a few belongings from his flooding first-floor apartment and join the others upstairs. With no power, the heat and humidity eventually drove the group to the roof, where they could hear breaking glass in the night.

No one slept well that night, but when they got up to move around and turned on flashlights, they noticed they were hearing gunshots. Soon they realized they were being shot at, so they kept the lights off and laid low until dawn.

The next day, they went for food, wading through waist-deep-and-rising water to a grocery store. Even the police were looting stores for food and water, Brown said, and when they were done they would tell the public they could have what was left. Back on the roof, the scene was becoming increasingly more surreal.

Looters would set buildings on fire when they were finished. The flames, smoke and gunshots, and the helicopters flying overhead made it feel like Apocalypse Now, Brown said. He said the ordeal was worse than his time in Desert Storm.

They listened to the radio for news but found little comfort. There were reports of rescues and food drops, but they saw none of it. All the while the black water rose.

"We were on that roof for four days," he said. "There was no rescue for us, no order, no military, just a bunch of confused people."

Every day was the same chaos, but it built up, he said. Food was a long, wet slog away, through greasy, dank water that had bodies floating in it. Anxiety was running high. When helicopters would fly so low he could see the pilots' eyes and their gestures of "be right back," defeated hopes pressed down more heavily.

That fourth night, Brown was inside listening to the radio, seeing fires of nearby buildings through the windows, thinking it was only a matter of time before his building became a target. He thought he heard splashing on the first floor, believed he saw figures coming up the stairs toward him in the gloom. When he realized it was his imagination, he decided he had to get out.

The next day, he and a few others packed what they could in several layers of garbage bags and headed off into the water toward the convention center. On the way, they ran into people fleeing who said the convention center was hell, don't go there. So Brown's group headed to the Superdome, which was no picnic either, he said.

"It looked like a Holocaust camp," he said. "It didn't look real at all."

He said the stench was unbearable and would make his eyes water. And that was when he was outside.

He met some friends there, who only added another weight to Brown's load. They were in recovery too, but they had fallen off the wagon with drugs and looted liquor from Superdome skyboxes and were tempting Brown. He had to fight those demons, forget the past four days, and try to keep his head clear enough to find a way out of New Orleans.

He could see the occasional evacuation bus roll out, and people waving as they escaped. Lines stretched everywhere, but there was no order, no way to know whether a line led to a bus or to a dead end. After one desperate night in the Superdome, Brown found his way onto a bus for Dallas. He said the destination there was like a concentration camp, so he used what little money he had left for a motel room. But in his mind he was still on the roof.

The next day, he reached his sister in California, and she wired him money to fly to Tampa where he had friends. Those friends were the same kind of bad influence he had left at the Superdome, so he continued his search for some semblance of peace, finding himself in St. Petersburg. With blisters and sores from the fetid floodwater, Brown headed for a Florida Department of Health clinic, and his luck started to change a bit when he met Diane Bower.

"I told him I was 15 years in recovery, so I knew what he was going through," Bower said. "I brought him to my house in Tampa. He needed a roof over his head, so we tried to find him one."

Which was a bit of a setback, too, Bower said. With no job and no money, Brown was not a prime candidate as a new apartment tenant. Bower offered to pay Brown his first month's rent, but when she told landlords he was an evacuee from Katrina, she was stunned when they asked whether he was "a white New Orleanian or a black New Orleanian."

Brown was turned away from 41 apartments and was growing ever more desperate in his shell-shocked state. That's when Bower, who had lived in Gulfport and plans to return, remembered what a welcoming community it can be. She started putting in calls and ran into Alice Janisch, a real estate agent who had recently sold an older fixer-upper investment home to Evelyn Roberts. Janisch was hooked on Brown's tale, and when he shared it with Roberts, she offered him her house for three months rent free if he'd help her repair it.

"I asked him one question," Roberts said. "Do you want a new life? I only ask that you rescue a Katrina dog."

Brown now plans to move into Roberts' house in Gulfport and will gladly take in a dog. As he walked around the house Thursday, planning renovations to the two-bedroom block structure on Clam Bayou, Janisch showed up with a spare bicycle for Brown to use as transportation. He'll need that because the women also used their connections to find him a hospital clerical job. Furniture is on its way to the home, as are clothes in Brown's size.

"Gulfport has engulfed Eric," Bower said. "That's the type of community Gulfport is."

Then she turned to Brown and said: "You don't have to fight for your life anymore. You're starting a new one."

Brown is thankful but is still very much in a daze. He has had a hard life, with a father and two brothers who committed suicide, and a history of bad relationships. When his mother died a few years ago, he recognized his addictions and went into rehab. He now credits that experience and his eight years in the military for the strength he needed to get past Katrina. But real joy only begins to show in his eyes as he starts to believe his new circumstance.

"It's hard for me to show," he said. "But everything is just one more blessing after another."

Brown, with nothing, has managed to scrape enough together to buy gifts for Bower, Janisch and Roberts. He says it's not much, but he plans to do more for them soon. They accept the cards and pictures and thanks with a family's warmth. Brown smiles a rare but illuminating smile.

"As long as I have my peace of mind, that's where it starts," he said. "Eventually, I won't wake up on the roof anymore."

[Last modified September 21, 2005, 00:24:18]