Memories of Katrina haven't faded five years on
GROWING up in Dundonald in the 1970s, Stephen Rea never imagined he would one day be running for his life from the most costly natural disaster to hit an American city.
Sunday past (August 29) was the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, the most destructive storm to ever hit America. It killed more than 1,800 people, caused an estimated $150 billion worth of damage, and scattered debris across 87,000 square miles – an area the size of Great Britain.
Stephen groans at his timing as regards buying into the New Orleans property market – just six months before the disaster hit. A former journalist with The Sun, he had just launched himself into a career as a writer and did not have to wait long until inspiration of biblical proportions struck.
He had lived in Holywood, Co Down, with his American wife Julie for some time before the Ulster weather pushed her back home. The couple agreed that New Orleans was just to their taste for a new life together.
Hurricane Ivan had been predicted to cause chaos in the city the year before, but nothing happened; like many others, the couple were not too worried about Katrina.
But early on the Sunday morning before it was due to strike, their phone started ringing.
"Friends just kept calling and asking had we seen the television. They kept saying 'you have got to leave'," Stephen says.
His friend Richard Wilson – whose family own Ulster Carpets – called and told him to come and stay with him in Atlanta.
"We literally ran out the door, me with two T-shirts and two pairs of boxer shorts. It took us two hours to drive six miles.
"New Orleans is about the size of Belfast, so you had about 150,000 people trying to get out at the same time on only two major roads."
Eventually they gave up and turned onto back roads. Even then traffic congestion remained extreme.
They drove 150 miles to a friend's in Mississippi to spend the night.
"We got up the next day and said 'let's drive back', which was idiotic," says Stephen.
"We were driving back into the hurricane. There were no other cars on the roads except for police and HGVs.
"There were big branches blowing across the motorway and radio reports of little tornados popping up everywhere, which happens with hurricanes.
"The radio also said that the flood barriers in New Orleans had broken. We stopped at a bar in Monroe on the way and saw images of water pouring through New Orleans. We were stunned.
"There was not a hotel room to be found in the state of Louisiana so we had to drive 10 hours to get to the nearest one, in Dallas. We were numb and in shock."
To add to the trauma, all mobile phones belonging to anyone from New Orleans stopped working because all the phone masts in that city were flooded. So even though Stephen was safely in another city he could not contact any of his friends using his mobile phone or theirs.
"We didn't know if they were dead or alive," he says.
A friend from Belfast who was working as a pilot in California put the couple up. Meanwhile, New Orleans was locked down and anybody left inside was forcibly expelled.
Most companies with branches in New Orleans moved those offices elsewhere, which is what happened with his wife's employer.
So the couple ended up living in rural Texas for three months.
As Stephen was "stranded in the middle of nowhere" while his wife continued work, he struck upon the idea of writing a book about his experience.
He had just finished a comedy novel set in New Orleans when Katrina struck, but guessed it would now be hard to sell such an idea in the literary world.
Back home things could have been worse. Their 125-year-old wooden house was not flooded, as it was on some of the highest ground in the city.
But there was 60,000 worth of damage to the roof and the front door and some windows were destroyed. It took four months for a loss adjuster to visit and they only offered 8,000 to fix the roof.
"Many houses on lower ground were just swept away. There were houses on cars and cars on houses and upturned boats in the middle of the city. It was post-apocalyptic.
"One couple searched and searched but couldn't find their house. A newspaper reported that another house had been found and nobody knew where it had come from."
Stephen sneaked back into the city after three weeks, getting through army checkpoints by saying he was a journalist sent from Northern Ireland.
"It was the most surreal experience of my life," he says. "I was in the middle of a major US city in the 21st century and I was alone. It was as though everybody had been kidnapped by aliens."
The couple returned to the city after three months, and it took some time before life there returned to normal.
He says: "At first there were no schools, no traffic lights, no hospitals, no electricity and no rubbish collection. We were living in the 20 per cent of the city which did not flood."
His local pub, Finn McCool's, was owned by a Belfast couple and was totally destroyed. It had to be rebuilt by hand.
Stephen says that when he first walked in, long before Katrina, he found the owner serving drinks in a Celtic shirt while two guys in Rangers shirts and sporting tatoos of William, Prince of Orange sat at the bar.
"Because it is such a small community out there you have Celtic and Rangers fans watching Old Firm games together in the pub," he said.
Members of the pub football team had dramatic stories to tell. Stephen McAnespie, had been a professional player with Bolton Wanderers.
"He had been asleep in bed and woke up to find water all around his bed. The next thing he knew he was swept off his bed and out the window.
"He was being swept down the road and couldn't swim, so he grabbed a chimney and clung to a roof for two days before the coastguard helicopter rescued him. He was severely sunburned and could not even drink water, he had to dab it on his lips.
"Another Dutch member of the team stayed. He and some friends ended up breaking into a cash till and swimming past dead bodies and out of the city to escape. But when they got to the city perimeters they were forbidden from leaving on foot by army checkpoints. So they found a man who had stolen a school bus and bribed him to drive them out using the ATM cash."
One player came to stay in Stephen's house for a year with his pregnant girlfriend, as he had lost his home, job and mother-in-law.
That was the pattern across the team; those who lost homes and livelihoods to the 200mph winds were helped by those who were able to do so.
n Finn McCool's Football Club: The Birth, Death, and Resurrection of a Pub Football Team in the City of the Dead has gained critical acclaim from the Washington Post, which described it as "funny, touching, troubling and ultimately inspiring". The book is available from all good bookstores and Amazon.co.uk.
Email to a friend
Print this page
Looking for...
Featured advertisers
Jobs
Search for a job
Motors
Search for a car
Property
Search for a house
Weather for Belfast
Monday 28 May 2012
Today
Sunny
Temperature: 12 C to 23 C
Wind Speed: 14 mph
Wind direction: South east
Tomorrow
Sunny spells
Temperature: 13 C to 20 C
Wind Speed: 8 mph
Wind direction: South
