Cedric Brown is a twenty-one-year-old man who lived in New Orleans and stayed through Hurricane Katrina. He tells his story about how he and his mother decided to stay and in New Orleans despite the Mayor’s mandatory evacuation dictate.

He told how they were calm at first. His small family had gotten together at his mother’s home where they’d planned to wait it out. Thinking that nothing much was going to happen, they settled in to having good family time together. However, what began with games and laughter, soon disintegrated into wading through water with backed up sewerage, no lights or phones even cell phones. They were forced to flee to a nearby two-story home and break in to find shelter higher up.

Cedric led his family to a house that he and his brother scouted-out and verified as empty. They literally carried their feeble aunt to a stranger’s house, abandoned because of the storm. Cedric slept on the rooftop with a flashlight to signal anyone doing rescue operations in the area. Finally someone saw him. They were taken by boat to a bridge near the St. Bernard housing development. From there they were taken to the Superdome and as they traveled Cedric saw that they were no higher than two feet from the water’s surface. And through that he may have seen cars, but what he did say that he saw were rooftops—only.

Thinking that they would be well cared for in the Superdome, he was excited to arrive there with his family in tact and to see others there that were family and friends. As people quickly arrived in droves, as early as the next day, things began to deteriorate. There was a measure of panic, pandemonium, chaos. People were living in stark survival mode and he was not above that.

He was trying still to care for his family in the best manner that he could in a situation for which he had no frame of reference. He tried to get food for his aunt who had difficulty walking and standing. He was told rudely, that it would not work that way. His altercation with the National Guardsman over this sensitive issue in such a trying time added to the strain that made it difficult to maintain himself.

In the Superdome he saw fights, heard gunshots, saw cigarettes selling for a dollar each. He also saw people just giving away what they had to whomever needed it. They were there just surviving.

When it was time to leave, again he was trying to help those less able than he to fend for themselves. Working with strangers and his family, they tried to help the elderly and the infirmed to the front of the “line” where the National Guard said they needed to be. This assistance was met with guns pointed at Cedric and the other citizens and the directive, “Just drop them right there.” Cedric was beside himself by his own admission. He saw that in order to maintain some semblance of order, the Guardsmen were doing whatever they deemed necessary, including shooting people. He went back into the Superdome to calm himself in order to steer clear of that happening, and got separated from his mother.

Eventually they all got to Texas and he and his brother were in San Antonio in a shelter while his mother and aunt came here to Houston. It took him about three days to get to his mother and then to Houston with the aid of the people in the shelter.

Cedric’s story of survival continues as he struggles to make it here the best way he can. He still goes from place to place trying to live and work. FEMA helped him only briefly with money. At one time he had a FEMA job. He wants to go home. He wants to work there, but there’s no place to live. He travels between family and friends in Houston and Dallas just trying to keep his head above water. So far he’s managing, but I think his labors are not over.