When the wall of water came, Peggy Casanova was racing from room to room, unstrapping residents of St. Rita’s Nursing Home near New Orleans from wheelchairs and laying them on beds.
Mattresses float, Casanova explained.
“As the water rose, the mattresses rose,” Casanova said, sitting in a Denver Volunteers of America building Tuesday.
Like so many others, she has lost everything – her home and all that was in it, including her beloved pit bull, Red.
Volunteers of America hosted Casanova and about 30 other Hurricane Katrina survivors for lunch and interviews Tuesday.
Most arrived in Denver on Saturday. They were among the first of more than 200 hurricane victims now in Colorado.
The first to arrive are “now at a point where people need one- on-one case management,” said Jim White of Volunteers of America.
Casanova, 55, and a lifelong friend, Leslie Corley – the two somehow found each other among the thousands crowded into the Houston Astrodome – spent Tuesday answering questions about their job skills, their religious faith, their plans.
But the conversation inevitably strayed back to Louisiana, to St. Bernard Parish and St. Rita’s Nursing Home.
Patients couldn’t be strapped to the mattresses, and one woman slipped off, Casanova said.
“She was screaming, ‘Don’t let me drown, Peggy, don’t let me drown,”‘ Casanova said.
Casanova reached into the water and grabbed the woman by the neck of her hospital gown.
One of the nursing home’s owners retrieved a boat and a handgun. The staff pushed the patients’ mattress flotilla as they all swam toward an exit.
But the doors jammed, trapping everyone.
“I thought I was going to die,” Casanova said.
From the other side of the door, the owner’s grandson fired shots at the door, and it opened.
The staff got 17 patients out, loaded into the boat and then hoisted everyone onto the roof.
But they could not get back to get the rest. All but one of about 30 patients left behind have died, Casanova has been told.
Those who escaped were taken to a middle school, where a police officer helped one of Casanova’s colleagues break into a drugstore to collect medicines.
Four more days passed – one spent beneath a highway overpass – until she ended up at the Astrodome and found Corley.
With her friend, clean clothes and plenty to eat, Casanova is ready to start over in Denver.
At the moment, she’s still in shock. “I’m so lost, I don’t even know what day it is,” she said.
Individuals who call 303-366- 2082 can give the name of their family member to an official who will check the roster of registered evacuees housed on the Community College of Aurora’s Lowry Campus.
IN SAFE HARBOR: STORIES FROM EVACUEES
Every few minutes Tuesday, 13-year-old Sam Smith stopped whatever he was doing even eating lunch walked to
the nearest phone and dialed his mother’s number.
No matter how many times he did it, the result was the same: a recording telling him that “all circuits are busy now.”
And so one more day went by since Sam had talked to his mother. One more day since she had stayed behind in the family’s New Orleans home while the rest of the family headed to the Louisiana Superdome.
His is one of the many stories that have emerged from evacuees who began arriving in Denver over the weekend.
While Sam’s mom is missing, his family is his 24-year-old brother, Cash; Cash’s wife, Latoya Mathews, 20; Cash’s 4-year- old son; and Latoya’s two nieces, one 13 and the other a 7-year-old budding artist who is deaf and is blind in one eye.
After days in the squalor of the Superdome and a few more days in Dallas, getting separated and finding each other again, the extended family is together, fast forming a tight unit.
Tuesday, when a Volunteers of America worker asked Cash Smith, “Do you plan to keep them all here with you?” he didn’t hesitate.
“Yes, they’re with us. And this is going to be home.”
A tour of extremes
In the past week, Veronica Apav has seen human beings at their most depraved and at their most benevolent.
Apav and her five children, ages 10 to 17, were among the first evacuees of Hurricane Katrina to arrive at the New Orleans convention center after the storm pushed them out of their rental. They didn’t have money to fuel their car and could not afford a hotel out of the hurricane’s path.
So the single mother who worked at a department store rode out the storm, then marched with her sons and daughters for more than 35 blocks in waist-deep water to the convention center.
They saw young punks pushing older people. Mothers with babies shoved aside. People jumping from balconies.
“We thought we would die there,” Veronica said. “It was just shocking to me what we saw happening.” After two days, they fled the center.
At a highway overpass where people shared food and water, there was hope. The family was rescued Sunday and now plans to stay in Denver.
“I want to get the kids in school,” Apav said, “and get a job and try to get some normalcy.”
Thinking about staying
Reginald Thibodeaux, 41, said that for two days, he and his two children stayed in their New Orleans house as it filled with water after the hurricane.
They kept waiting for the water to recede, but it kept rising. And rising.
Thibodeaux and his daughters, ages 4 and 7, fled their home, got to a school roof and were eventually picked up and led to safety. They flew from Louisiana to Colorado on Sunday.
“I thought we were going to die,” said the hurricane evacuee, who joined more than 160 survivors at the old Lowry Air Force Base in Aurora.
For Thibodeaux, the strangeness of the past week is undeniable. Only once or twice has he been outside of his home state of Louisiana, to Georgia for football games.
“God is good,” he said, standing outside the dorms at Community College of Aurora. His daughters were off getting their hair done.
“They are treating us real good. I’m thinking about staying.”
No lack of volunteerism
Jeff Cahill, a volunteer with the Salvation Army, manned a truck on the college’s Lowry Campus by himself Tuesday morning as donations for Katrina victims were being collected.
But it wasn’t long before he had plenty of help.
“It’s overwhelming,” said Cahill, 39, of Highlands Ranch. “Everyone dropping things off asked, ‘Is there anything else you need? Is there anything else we can do?”‘
Among items stuffed into the truck were clothes, toys, baby strollers, diapers, baby formula and school supplies.
Karla Ross-Donaldson, a Denver middle school teacher, said she heard about the donation drop-off at her church on Sunday.
“I dropped some stuff off I was going to sell,” she said. She was among the impromptu volunteers who stayed to help.
Compiled from Denver Post staff reports.
