University at Buffalo - The State University of New York

Published: September 8, 2005

By JESSICA KELTZ
Reporter Contributor

A handful of UB students and staff hail from southern Louisiana and the Gulf Coast region, including one whose family moved from New Orleans to Washington, D.C., a week before Hurricane Katrina struck.

Although they say the tragedy was not unexpected—experts had been warning about the possibility for years—they still describe watching it unfold as "surreal."

"Our property was, as far as we know, not damaged," said Catherine Rowan, a junior physical therapy major who said her family lived in New Orleans for about five years and was trying to sell the family home when the storm hit. "Some of the trees in the area might have fallen, but there was no other damage."

Rowan explained that her parents' home was on the western bank of the Mississippi River, an area known as flood zone B. The worst-hit areas, she said, were in flood zone A.

Rowan's family moved to New Orleans when her father, a colonel in the Army Corps of Engineers, was assigned there. She attended high school in the area and spent breaks from UB there during her first two years of college.

Rowan said her father was not surprised when the levees were overwhelmed and water poured into New Orleans.

"My father kind of expected it because of being the colonel in command of the corps of engineers," she said. "He knew how much protection the levees provided—really, the system was set up to protect against a Category 3 hurricane," not a Category 5 hurricane like Katrina.

While he was still working in New Orleans—Rowan's father recently was transferred to Baghdad—she said her father would travel to Washington about twice a month to lobby for more flood-control funds. Even though she knew that a hurricane of Katrina's size would overwhelm the flood protections that were in place, she still described the devastation as "unbelievable."

Warde Manuel, UB's new director of athletics, grew up in New Orleans, and his parents and sister still live there. He's been in touch with his family members, and they're all safe.

"Everybody is out safe, but we don't know about the house down there," Manuel said, noting his parents live about a mile from Lake Pontchartrain.

"They were out before the hurricane hit. My parents were in a hotel in downtown New Orleans, but they got out after a couple of days. They're down in Baton Rouge now with my aunt." His sister has moved temporarily to Georgia.

"Neither of my parents nor I could fathom that the water could get that high," he said. "We knew there was always a chance something could happen, but nothing of this magnitude. Normally maybe just a section of the city will flood.

"I don't know of anyone in the city who knew it could happen to this magnitude," he said.

"As much as people have shown their kindness and support to people in the city, it needs to be there a number of years...We need to rebuild this part of the country as we've done before after other disasters."

Katarina Tetreault also used to live in the Gulf Coast area. She was born in Mobile, Ala., grew up in Birmingham, and returned to Mobile for her freshman year of college. She transferred to UB after one year at the University of Southern Alabama so she could major in linguistics.

Like Rowan, she had known that New Orleans was vulnerable because of changes in the coastline and the way the Mississippi River has been managed.

"The truth is, people have known this would happen for several years," she said. "The Mississippi floods naturally every few years, and has washed sediment down that created the Louisiana coast. Because they installed levees, the coast has slowly been shrinking.

"Something could have been done years in advance," she added.

Tetreault said that most of her friends and family live in Birmingham, which was not badly affected by Katrina, and she has been able to stay in contact with them.

Another UB student, Erika Coles, recently moved to Jackson, Miss., to complete a residency in clinical psychology at the University of Mississippi Medical Center.

"I am from Buffalo, so I probably have the opposite problem of many who are in Buffalo and trying to reach other people down there," she said. "For several days I could not get any cell service, so reaching people in Buffalo was a problem."

In Jackson, buildings sustained much less damage than in the New Orleans area, she said, but power went out in most of the city and stores were closed for days.

"People are waiting up to six hours for gas," she said. "Jackson's population has doubled in the days since the hurricane because of all of the people fleeing the coast, and the hospital here is filled."

This past weekend, shelters began to run low on food and other necessities, she said. "Lots of people are frustrated with the emergency response," she added.