Anthony's Done with Hurricanes

He’s from New Orleans and he’s a Katrina survivor who managed to make it safely to Houston after the storm. For 13 years he was an Assistant Manager at the world famous Café DuMond in the French Quarter. Then, in September, 2005, Katrina ravaged the city, changing Anthony’s life forever.

He was in his first floor apartment in the Gentilly area of town when the hurricane hit. “Being from New Orleans, I’ve seen many hurricanes,” he says. “But for the first time I saw an anchorwoman getting up out of her chair saying ‘We’re gonna be leaving now’, so I switched over to another station, and they’re doing the same thing, every one of them. Then the power went off, and right after that I heard the roof come off.”

Anthony ended up on top of the apartment house with 8 of his neighbors on a makeshift roof improvised from 3 sheets of plywood. They were there for 3 days with no food and only a small supply of water.

“All we had was water that a lady brought up there,” he says. “We could only sleep 30 minutes at a time. I thought I was gonna die at least 3 times. I looked up in the sky all day and saw no planes, no helicopters. And no rescue boats in the water. Every night on the roof, we heard gunshots all over the city. You don’t know if that bullet is coming your way or not.”

After three days, Anthony and his neighbors were finally rescued by a Coast Guard helicopter. “It was a beautiful sight, that helicopter,” he says. The Coast Guard left him in a grocery store parking lots with hundreds of other survivors, where the Red Cross provided food and water, but little else.

Then buses started lining up and the survivors started boarding, without even knowing where they were going. “You know, it was funny,” explained Anthony. “People were anxious to get on the buses just to get out of there. No one even asked where they were going. They didn’t care.”

Soon enough the evacuees found out their destination – the Astrodome in Houston. Anthony, and thousands of others, spent 3 weeks there. After that, FEMA found him an apartment and his life started to improve. “The welcoming we got from people in Texas was about the best thing I had ever seen.”

But Anthony couldn’t find a job, so he got evicted after 2 years. Also, a battered old car he had managed to buy was stolen. Without a job, transportation, or a place to stay, he was homeless for the first time in his life. He went to the Beacon for lunch and that’s where HHH/Cathedral Clinic staff contacted him.

With the help of HHH and Cathedral Clinic physicians, nurses, and social workers, he got the medications he needed and was able to avoid spending many nights on the street. “They took me step by step through the process,” he explains. “I know I was getting good help.”

Now, Anthony’s the House Manager at a local temporary housing facility where he takes care of 24 people, who are homeless and destitute. He’s even purchasing a used pick-up truck so he’ll be able to help deliver supplies and equipment. It’s a natural step for Anthony who sees his new life as a way to ‘give back’ for the help he received.

“I feel so sorry for people who are stuck and homeless. I was able to get past it. I found help. I’m fortunate.”