New Orlean natives share feelings about Katrina

Katrina, page 1 one thing, but it is hard to process that these pictures are of my home. My friends have told me about some of our favorite restaurants being destroyed and its times like that when I wish I was home.”

“It is simply too hard to process the reality of the entire situation,” Superneau said.

Kristen Traina, a sophomore graphic design major from Metairie, La., said, “I had no idea what my family was going through until I went to visit them last week. My parents, two younger sisters, and older brother are living in a Houston hotel room with two beds, two dogs and a cat. It is ridiculous. It is crazy, it stinks. The worst part is being displaced.” She explained that her sister is a senior at Cabrini high school and is distraught over the idea of a ruined senior year. “Her and her friends may be separated for their remainder of the year, its just chaos right now and I feel the worst for her,” she said.

Traina’s home suffered no water damage but did suffer extreme wind damage. “There is a tree that blew over and did some pretty bad damage to my house. The house will eventually be livable but there is a huge sewage problem right now,” Traina said.

Traina’s family is trying to slowly put the pieces of their home back together. Like Superneau, Traina’s father has returned home to gather what can be salvaged from their memories.

“Although it will eventually be livable, my family will be displaced in Baton Rouge until at least December,” she said.

Traina also agreed with Superneau that she would rather be with her family despite the devastation. Traina said, “It seemed like I was always thinking about them, what they were doing, what they were saying, what everything looked like, my mind was constantly on them until I went to visit them. It was impossible to concentrate on anything but our situation because everywhere I turned there was someone talking about it or someone asking me about it.”

Catalonatto said that if the levee hadn’t broke, then her house would have only suffered four or five feet of water But because it did, the lake poured into the canal, and the canal flooded her neighborhood. Her house, she said, is a one-story house, which withstood Hurricanes Betsey and Camille, two of the worst hurricanes to date, besides Katrina. Her grandmother’s house, which is located next door, was in worse shape than hers. It suffered 18 feet of flood water “There is mud inside every house, it smells like raw sewage, because of the disgusting water,” she said.

Catalanatto’s house is physically still standing, but everything is wet. Her brother, who is an engineer, is still in New Orleans helping out. “He has seen tons of lives ruined, but it didn’t hit home really until he saw his own,” she said, “My brother was able to get into our house last Saturday My brother ’s a big, football player, engineer guy, and he was crying.”

Catalanotto said that every video tape is gone. Many pictures and pieces of furniture are destroyed. “My brother got into the house and the sofa was in front of the door, the refrigerator was lifted up and the water had knocked it on its side. My sister ’s graduation picture, you wouldn’t even know it had existed. It’s just washed away My graduation picture is half destroyed,” she said. Her brother was able to recover some photo albums on top of a closet. The coffeehouse where Cattalanotto and her mom worked, is now gone as well.

Catalanotto still does not know where some of her cousins are that lived in the city of St. Bernard because they are unable to get in touch with them. She said, “They are not on any of the registries so we don’t know if they got out or not.” Her parents were able to escape the storm to Philadelphia. They arrived the day the storm hit.

“Being from a reporter back- ground, I want to be there, I want to see it with my own eyes. I want to have some type of closure to it. I want to be able to go to my house and say goodbye,” Catalanotto said.

All the girls said that while they appreciate everyone’s concern for them, when someone asks them if they are okay they give a generic answer. “If I just say, ‘everything’s fine, immediate family is safe, the house is gone, we’ll rebuild,’that’s the easiest thing to say. I don’t want to bring myself down or bring the day down and say, ‘I can’t find my cousin, I can’t find my pictures,’because that doesn’t make me feel better and won’t make you feel better But in time it will, I will be able to talk about it later, but I don’t want to talk about it everyday now, I don’t,” Catalanotto said.

Catalanotto said that she used to watch CNN and was on the Internet constantly She said, “I got to a point where I didn’t want to see where I used to catch the bus, I didn’t want to see that corner with dead bodies on it. I didn’t want to see houses that I knew my house was going to look like. So I stopped watching.”

Catalanotto wants to go back home to help out in whatever way she can. She said, “No pun intended, but we are all in the same boat, none of us have houses to go home to, no jobs to go home to, money is going to be tight for everybody, but we all have to stick together.”

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