HURRICANE KATRINA: 10 YEARS LATER

FARRAH GAFFORD LEFT TOWN AFTER the mayor issued the mandatory evacuation notice. She was among the last to make it out before the storm that drastically changed her life’s course.

Gafford grew up in Lake Highlands and attended Richardson ISD schools including LHHS.

She moved to New Orleans in 2001 and was nearing the end of graduate studies at Tulane University in August of 2005.

“I would always get out of town when there was a hurricane, but my boyfriend convinced me we could hunker down in New Orleans,” she recalls. “Then my dad called Sunday morning from Dallas and asked me to come home. We made it to Olive Branch, Miss., at midnight and watched the storm on TV.”

Gafford had been renting in a higher-elevation neighborhood, and her place was not as badly damaged as most, but she found it impossible to return to the city right away. It was worse than predicted, she says.

While she did not face the immediate intense suffering experienced by those who stayed, every area of Gafford’s life was impacted. Tulane endured such immense destruction that its campus closed indefinitely. Gafford’s graduate program dissolved and the neighborhood she was researching for her sociology doctorate no longer existed.

“How do you replace your whole life? That is what I was thinking,” she says.

Immediately following the storm, Gafford moved in with her family in Dallas. She says she encountered an outpouring of generosity from Lake Highlands people, but having spoken with many survivors, she also has heard the narrative of evacuees being treated badly.

She began to study the sociological impact of Katrina and its aftermath on people who were adolescents and teens when the hurricane struck. She interviewed more than 30 18to 25-year-old survivors and wrote a chapter in the book, “Rethinking Disaster Recovery” examining the career paths of African American emerging adults in post-Katrina New Orleans. From her studies she is able to confirm that young people who came from New Orleans to Lake Highlands likely transferred to a superior educational system, which might have paid off for them in the long run, though it was undoubtedly a difficult adjustment.

She notes that young people (like Harvie Sykes and Kristie Jemison) suffered in many ways: First, there is the traumatic initial impact, and many of them had residual symptoms consistent with post-traumatic stress disorder; second, they had continuing stress as they were forced to adjust to new environments, the loss of friends and culture, a new and more-challenging school system, often after having missed several months of school.

“Coming of age in all of this, some stu-

Maybe recognizing that some of those looters were 15- and 16-year-old kids looking for food and water, that those who did not evacuate likely had no option, would have quelled the criticism.

“What does poverty look like? Many did not understand. Living in the suburbs, for example, you don’t think of people not having cars, credit cards to stay in a hotel — some did dents had good experiences, but you add that trauma to the already traumatic experience of emerging adulthood, some of them are still struggling.”

Why were some of the transplants to Lake Highlands mistreated?

Gafford believes it had to do partly with “around-the-clock images in the media of people behaving wrongly in the Katrina aftermath, abusing the system, but without proper context.” not have a choice,” Gafford says.

After eventually earning her PH.D from Tulane in 2008, Gafford became an associate professor at Xavier University of Louisiana where she taught sociology until last year. She continued to research Katrina as it related to urban sociology and sociology of family, race and ethnicity.

She recently married and, six months ago, had a child and has moved back to Texas.

THE CONGREGATION AT ST. PATRICK’S

Church in Lake Highlands knows Earlin Vincent as an outstanding soprano. Most know, because she often speaks fondly of her hometown, she is a New Orleans native who came to our neighborhood as a result of Hurricane Katrina.

Her sunny personality belies the painful memories that surface when she talks about the storm that destroyed her home and uprooted her life.

“I was finally in my retirement dream house,” she says with a wistful smile.

She was born and reared in the Seventh Ward; in 2001 she had retired from her job as a schoolteacher and was remodeling a home in Eastern New Orleans. In semi-retirement, she taught voice lessons at Xavier University and served as cantor at St. Dominic’s. She “loved, loved, loved” it.

When the evacuations were ordered, Vincent did not think twice: she booked a room at the nearest available hotel, in Beaumont, Texas. Her elderly parents were another story.

“My dad and mom did not want to leave. I had to make them come with me.” her most valued possession, a collection of family and teaching photo albums, on a high shelf. lude that blew me away,” she recalls. “It’s rare that you hear that in church.”

She remembers the mayor on the news pleading for people to evacuate and asking ministers to offer transportation for those in need.

The main reason she left, she says, was because she heard the storm would hit category four or five, and she expected electricity and water would be out for several days. It wasn’t because she anticipated the flooding or devastation that occurred once the levees broke, she says.

From a hotel lobby, she and her family and other evacuees watched TV.

She got lucky, she says. “Out of the blue” a friend of her brother offered up his empty three-bedroom condominium in the Lake Highlands area.

“When he saw us, he hugged my brother and told us about how my brother had once helped him,” she says. When we arrived, members of his church brought blankets, clothes, food.

“It was the first time I cried through the whole thing,” Vincent says.

After mass she asked to audition for the choir.

“I was told to come to rehearsal Wednesday, and the rest is history.”

Vincent and her 90-year-old mother her father died four years ago — live in a home in Garland now, in a subdivision that she says reminds her of New Orleans.

“I was 65 and did not want to go start over in a city that also needed to catch up. The neighborhoods I grew up in are gone.”

Aside from serving as cantor at St. Patrick’s, Vincent leads the children’s choir and has produced two music CDs.

Mostly they sat in silent disbelief.

“It was very quiet during those days. Sometimes someone would start crying,” she says.

She remembers seeing images of the street signs in her neighborhood, water reaching their tops.

Based on the footage, Vincent and her parents, who lived in the Gentilly neighborhood, knew their homes were underwater.

She had packed enough clothing for three days. Before she left, she had placed

She cried again when she returned to the remnants of her home — St. Dominic’s church was covered in mold, piles of wood replaced houses, the dirty residue of 6 feet of water was visible on her walls and the photos were nothing but swirls of color muddied on the floor.

“When I realized that was my pictures, I just felt queasy.”

Soon after landing in Lake Highlands, Vincent attended church at St. Patrick’s.

“The organist was playing a Bach Pre-

While she suffered some loss, Vincent says she can’t complain. “We lost no lives. And I have made many friends here. I miss my students from Xavier, but I am where I am supposed to be. And my mother is very comfortable here.”

When the anniversaries come and the images of Hurricane Katrina show up on TV again, Vincent cannot look. “It reminds me too much of those still suffering. Those who have never recovered,” she says. “Materials were lost, but also some people lost some irreplaceable thing within themselves. I only suffer for them and for those who died.”

HURRICANE KATRINA: 10 YEARS LATER