Update on my parents and oldest sister. From some unknown prompting my parents decided, the day before Katrina hit, to stay uptown with my sister Susan at her second floor apt., thinking the storm would drop a little rain at most. As you know the levees broke and their neighborhood was flooded with 12-15 feet of water. If they hadn't left, they would have drowned. As they wouldn't heed any advice to leave before the storm hit, I actually left them a message saying "goodbye," thinking I would never see them again.

Well, they survived uptown with only 6feet of water surrounding them, no electricity, no phone service, no working plumbing and no fresh water. The keepsakes they took with them they had left in their cars, which were now submerged. Here they stayed a week with a kind neighbor bringing them food and water when he could get to them in his small boat.

We heard false rumors that my Mom had been taken to a hospital and my Dad and sister had been flown out of the city... not so! In fact they stayed the entire week in the apt. until my sister and Dad got fed up and waded out to find help. Another local with a boat picked them up and dropped them off at a nearby police station where they were told they couldn't stay as the station wasn't a refugee camp! The neighbor who brought them stood up for them and the police finally relented and let my parents and sister sleep in some lawn chairs out behind the station, in the parking lot. Taking pity on them (my parents are both 77) an officer brought them some ice, water and some jambalaya someone had made for the police.

After this they were dropped off at the New Orleans Convention Center, a hell-hole where there had been murders and rapes and bodies were piled here and there. My mom said the stench was over-powering and the place was "Hell on Earth." Thank God they were some of the last to arrive there and thus near the fence gates when the military arrived. Only four people were allowed to exit the gates at a time and the pushing from behind was "crushing." Well, they got through and boarded a helicopter and were flown to Jackson(?) Airport, where a family from Benton, a town near Shreveport LA, offered to have them stay with them. This family was a true blessing. The Father was ex-military and able to arrange a free flight to my youngest sister's home in Wisconsin. My sister is still in Benton until she can hook up with her fiance' who is buying a house in Houston, never to return to New Orleans. In fact most of my relatives have stated, much to my relief, that they will never return to New Orleans.

I fear that the most deaths will come from the Parish where my parents, us kids, and many friends and relatives lived and grew up. The end result, at least for us, is that everyone is safe and I finally got a good night's sleep last night.