Katrina and Fort Wayne

Sheena Dooley reports on a displaced family from New Orleans now living in Fort Wayne.

India [Robertson] and her 19-year-old brother, Kileon, arrived in Fort Wayne about three weeks ago, after fighting to find their way out of the rising floodwaters in New Orleans. They rode in a bus from Louisiana to Texas to Arkansas, as their mother tried to find a way to bring them to Fort Wayne.

Arleen Robertson left New Orleans and her two children more than a week before Hurricane Katrina hit. She had no idea what the future held when she left her two children with her sister and 81-year-old mother and flew to Fort Wayne to visit her son, who lives here.

[...]They thought the worse was over when they went to sleep two nights after the hurricane ripped through New Orleans.

There was no electricity and the heat sweltered inside the two-story duplex India shared with her mother and older brother. But the house in the city’s Garden District suffered little damage. They had running water, a working phone and plenty of food.

“No one imagined the levee was going to break and the water would get that high,” India said.

The next morning she went outside to find 3 feet of brown, chemical-laced water flooding the street and the house. Rats and cockroaches swam through the rising water, and the pungent smell of paint thinner overtook the air. They listened to their battery-powered radio, not realizing what was happening.

“They said if they weren’t able to fix the break in the levee the water would keep rising and get up to 21 feet,” India said. “I thought I was going to drown. I thought I was going to die.”

India and Kileon were later rescued by helicopter; two days after that, a boat came for their aunt and grandmother.

Now the family is trying to rebuild their life and start over in Fort Wayne. Kileon and India started at Snider High School two weeks ago, and their mom is trying to find a job. She watches the news every day, waiting to hear her ZIP code called in New Orleans, so she can return to salvage what is left.

Quite a story, and more good work from Dooley.