Katrina Victim Still In Search Of Calm After Storm

By LINDSAY PETERSON lpeterson@tampatrib.com

Published: Apr 20, 2006

EDITOR'S NOTE: This story is part of an occasional series following four families uprooted by Hurricane Katrina who are trying to build new lives in the Tampa Bay area.

TAMPA - The thoughts slip into her head without warning. They twist her memories and leave her crying, her gut in a knot.

One minute Nicole Fontenot is pulling out of her driveway or just sitting in front of the television. The next she is seeing her two children at the New Orleans Superdome, lost, and her mother searching for them in the crushing, jostling crowd.

"I wasn't even there, but I can see it in my mind, my mom and my kids separated and trying to find someone to help them," Fontenot said. "This haunts me."

It's been more than seven months since Fontenot and her family fled to Tampa from New Orleans. Her children, 9 and 14, settled into school, Fontenot found a job and after months living with an aunt in Riverview, they found a place of their own in a subdivision nearby.

She prays for peace of mind, her leather-bound Bible never far from her hand. Fontenot thought she would feel better by now, but if anything, she's sadder, angrier, more unsettled than she has been since Hurricane Katrina raked the Gulf Coast and inundated her Gentilly neighborhood.

Katrina struck Aug. 29, submerging 80 percent of New Orleans and killing more than 1,300 people. Hundreds of thousands of people were forced to run.

Tens of thousands now are having nightmares, feeling anxious and angry and suffering from other symptoms of depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, experts say.

As many as 500,000 Katrina evacuees across the country may need mental health counseling for moderate to severe problems, says the U.S. Substance and Mental Health Services Administration. Of the evacuees like Fontenot, who feared for their lives or the lives of people they loved, up to 40 percent could be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, said psychiatrist Robert DiMartino, a mental health administration senior adviser.

For thousands of people, Katrina destroyed everything they knew, said John Clizbe, vice president of disaster services for the American Red Cross. "Everything that helped them keep their feet on the ground just disappeared, literally and figuratively. Their community support, friends, neighbors, everything that was familiar, all that is gone."

It's normal for them to be anxious or angry, even months later, he said. It's important they find a therapist to talk to, "someone to help them get things back into perspective."

Caught In The Chaos

Fontenot rode out the hurricane at the New Orleans police headquarters, where she worked in the crime lab. When the office flooded, operations shifted to a dry downtown hotel. While she stood guard duty, her mother, children and fiancé waited at the sweltering Superdome. They hadn't evacuated because they didn't want to leave Fontenot behind.

By Wednesday, Fontenot's cell phone had died. She was hearing rumors of rapes and killings at the dome. Nearly in a panic, she trudged through the filthy downtown floodwaters to see her family.

She could stay only a few minutes because she was still on duty. For the next three days she rarely ate or slept. Finally she got word that everyone at the Superdome was boarding buses for Texas, so she accepted a ride to Baton Rouge. Calm for the first time in days, her cell phone recharged, she managed to get through to family members in Tampa.

Something had gone wrong, they said. Her mother had been separated from Dymond and Troy. No one knew where her children were.

"It's like my head exploded," Fontenot said, "like a highway going every which way."

The minutes crawled. Three hours passed before she found out everyone was all right. Her children and mother had been put on different buses, but they all arrived at the same Dallas shelter. Her fiancé, Craig Ordogne, had boarded a bus to San Antonio.

By Sept. 5, they were all safe and together in Riverview.

What Was Lost

The family slowly got their bearings. The children found themselves in new suburban schools, welcomed by classmates. Fontenot's son, Troy Taylor, made the Riverview High School basketball team. Her daughter, Dymond Fontenot, joined the choir at Boyette Springs Elementary.

Fontenot's fiancé went to work for a paint company in Brandon, and Fontenot found a job with a furniture company call center.

Still, nothing felt right.

Life hadn't been perfect in New Orleans. Her two children were in failing schools. She had debts, including a mortgage. Every day in the crime lab, she dealt with the evidence of the city's violence.

When she felt overwhelmed, though, she could retreat to a spot in City Park, along Bayou St. John, where she would sit quietly and pray.

She had family and friends, people to call on when she needed help. She knew her city, its patterns and rhythms, by heart.

Katrina took it all away, her home, her job, her peace.

'This Isn't Home'

Fontenot had hoped that she would feel settled after the family moved in January and quit depending on her aunt.

They're renting, because she and Ordogne can't buy a house until she settles her insurance claim and decides whether she can rebuild in New Orleans, or whether she even wants to. At least 3 feet of water filled the house, warping the wood floors and door frames.

"I just want things to be normal," she said. "I always wanted and always prayed just to live comfortably. I don't need much. … I just want to live and have my children go to school and not struggle. I just want to mind my own business in my own home."

She salvaged her children's baby pictures from her flooded house, but they rest on the dining room floor. They lean against a cream-colored wall in the empty room. She hasn't put them up because it would mean putting holes in the walls of a house that doesn't belong to her.

"This isn't home," she said, referring to the comfortable, four-bedroom house where she's living, where her son was playing basketball with neighborhood children in the driveway and her daughter had taped an Ashanti poster to her bedroom wall.

"It's not mine."

As she talked on a recent Friday afternoon, she stood over Dymond, doing the girl's hair, talking in a flat, emotionless tone, keeping her emotions at bay as she described the past several months.

"I don't like to talk about it," she said. But it's almost impossible. When she introduces herself and says where she's from, people's eyes get big and she knows the questions are coming. "Lately, I've stopped telling people I'm from New Orleans."

She's also started thinking she should find a counselor.

Crawfish And Nightmares

Dymond said she also gets a lot of questions, mostly from teachers. But they don't bother her too much. "It's like I'm famous," she said.

She's been told her time at the Superdome was terrible, but she doesn't recall much of it. "I remember I slept, then we came here and I went to school."

She doesn't want to go back. Neither does Troy, who received the Palios Extra Effort Award in February from the Tampa Sports Club for his play on the Riverview junior varsity basketball team.

As Fontenot worked on her daughter's hair, Ordogne came in, a bushel bag of crawfish on his shoulder and a big smile on his face. "I'd planned to get crabs, but I saw these crawfish and I had to get them," he said.

"This is a big treat, boy. I feel like I'm at home. I need to go outside and see if we're still in Florida, boy, oh, boy."

Dymond's face lit up when she saw the bag. The family hadn't eaten crawfish since they left New Orleans.

Nicole Fontenot stayed focused on Dymond's hair, barely reacting, the crawfish just something else to remind her of the city she lost.

When New Orleans comes up, she said, "I always picture things being the same." Then reality intrudes and shakes her.

"I keep wondering what I should have done differently," she said. "If I had not gone to work, we all could have left. I still would have lost everything, but my family wouldn't have gone through what they did.

"I have these other thoughts. … What if something had happened? … I just picture them being separated."

She stopped talking, covering her face with her hands.