Escape from New Orleans

My first cousin Rhea Kathleen ("Kay") Reyes-Jacob and her husband Mikel, an executive of Tidewater, Inc., an oil firm based in New Orleans, their two children Kayla, 5, and Kaiel, 2, are four of the luckiest people alive. They "escaped" from New Orleans in the nick of time.

Since they are awaiting their visas to Mexico where Mikel will be posted, Kay and her family were temporarily based in New Orleans. Most of their possessions – including their wedding album and their children’s baby things – were in storage in the city and Kay expects that they are gone forever.

With just a few pieces of clothing and a full tank of gasoline, they "escaped" from New Orleans because they listened to an inner voice that told them to leave the city even when the warnings of Katrina’s might seemed like an exaggeration at most. As Kay says, being segurista is part of being Filipino – you are brought up to always be prepared in a land constantly battered by extraordinary forces, natural and otherwise.

This is her story of their family’s "great escape."

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As one man being interviewed on TV yesterday said, he was the luckiest man in New Orleans. We, too, consider ourselves very lucky and particularly blessed. So many things worked together to make us decide to evacuate the city last Saturday evening (Aug. 27), while the call was only for "voluntary evacuation."

We were only supposed to stay in New Orleans for a month but due to visa complications, we had to extend our stay indefinitely. Our visas are currently being applied for in Mexico so that should take a month at least. Unfortunately, the lease to our apartment, which ended Sunday, Aug. 28, could not be extended so the company moved us to a Marriott Residence Inn. We started moving our things last Friday and finished Saturday evening. By then, there were already talks of Katrina. The mayor of the city only called for voluntary evacuations maybe because storms always veer away from the city at the last minute. But once we were finally settled at the Marriott, we were told by the hotel that they will close by noon the next day and will move all guests to a sister hotel across the street. They did not say it but we surmised that the glass roofing above the hotel pose a great danger to guests once the wind starts getting fierce. Since we were already packed and did not consider a five to six hour drive to Houston too much of an inconvenience, we decided to go to Houston and just drive back to New Orleans the next day if the storm misses the city again.

It took us nine hours to get to Houston, arriving there at 6 a.m. The roads were full of cars even at dawn. Think, bumper-to- bumper traffic heading towards Manila after Holy Week in the Philippines. It was a good thing that Mikel was able to fill up the car Saturday morning not because we were alarmed by the storm but simply because we were almost running on empty. It took him two hours going around the city trying to find a gas station without snaking lines around it but still ended up lining up for almost an hour to get to the pump. It was a good thing, too, that despite not being too alarmed by the storm, I was brought up to be always segurista. Even if we weren’t sure to evacuate, I made reservations at a hotel in Houston for two nights beginning Sunday. I tried to get hotels closer to the city but everything was booked! The closest available was in Houston, about 350 miles away. We threw some clothes good for a few days into a suitcase, all our important documents, a small bag of Kaiel’s toys and our two Sacred Heart images. Now, everything we own fits into our small Kia compact.

The trip was surreal. The kids were asleep in their car seats but Mikel and I stopped a few times to either get something to eat or exchange seats. We’ve been moving the last two days and we were so tired. We could hardly stay awake so we took turns driving (although towards the end, I couldn’t keep my eyes open anymore so Mikel drove the rest of the way). Every time we made a stop at a gas station, it looked like we were in Manila during a major vacation season. Everyone and his brother were there! Entire families were squeezed in vehicles bursting at the seams.

It was only when we got to Houston and turned on the TV that we realized how lucky we were to get out when we did. The city was now under mandatory evacuation and those not able to go went to the superdome (their Araneta Coliseum, only much bigger). I’m sure you’ve heard and seen the news, too. We know of people who left at 9 a.m. Sunday and arrived in Houston at 7 a.m. the next day – 22 hours of travel!

There are soooo many stories that every time we hear them, it brings a stab to the heart. We were in New Orleans for two months but to us, that was home already. It was heartbreaking seeing the places we went to under so much water. Kaiel saw the superdome on TV and he says, "That’s my home." It’s located very close to our apartment and we pass it every day so he’s so familiar with it. We didn’t realize that we would not be able to go back there anytime soon.

We kid ourselves that it took being in America – the land of milk and honey – for us to become refugees. Calamity does not choose who or where you are. People being plucked from the roofs of their houses could very well be our kababayans from Marikina during a "bagyo". The only marked difference is, we hardly see anyone here smile or joke around. I call Mikel the happiest evacuee. Laging naka-smile when he talks about our experience. If you ask him how he is or how his family is, he says, "We’re good!" Sabi niya, he’s very thankful that we got out early. Never mind if we only have a suitcase of clothes among the four of us and that we have lost everything we have. Of course, compared to those who lost homes and loved ones, we really are very fortunate.

But we were very sure that if the Filipinos found themselves in this situation, someone could still crack a joke or two. In the hotels here, the evacuees keep to themselves. We are always the ones who ask, "Are you from New Orleans?" And then they start talking. You miss being a "community" in times like these. Filipinos would definitely have a permanent "discussion" group in the hotel lobby exchanging stories and generally supporting one another – maybe even playing mahjong! I guess they deal with these things far different than we do but the grief and the worry are all the same.

We all don’t know when we can go back. The city continues to get flooded because more of the levees are being breached and water continues to rise. The areas that were dry after the storm are now under a couple of feet of water and rising. We have almost given up on our things – the ones left in the hotel and the ones in storage ready for Mexico.

I have been feeling depressed the last few days thinking about Kayla and Kaiel’s baby things, our wedding album, and all the stuff we left behind. We have disposed of most of our things when we left Austin so what we had were what’s important to us. Now, we only have the basics. A few items of clothes, documents to keep us legal in the US and each other. When push comes to shove, you can let go of a lot of stuff but it doesn’t mean you won’t miss them. Thank God for relatives and friends who call, like Uncle Edward (Reyes) who had been especially helpful (as always) to us. He has been our "guardian angel" through all these – calling us numerous times to remind us to be careful, to find out how we are and what we need, to talk to the kids and give them a sense of normalcy, to crack jokes and make us laugh. I just tell myself to count my blessings instead of being depressed. There are so many people who lost their homes and loved ones. We have no home to lose here.

It doesn’t matter where you are when disaster strikes. We watch TV and think how it could have very easily been us there on top of roofs waving to helicopters to save us. Looting and violence are beginning to get worse in the city. I’m just glad we’re safe from all that now.

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