As New Jersey established a program to help animals in the event of a disaster such as the Katrina Hurricane, one former Bayonne resident recalled her efforts to flee Katrina and keep her pets alive.
For Evelyn Dufrene surviving the Katrina disaster was hardly possible without her connection to Bayonne.
Many months after the disaster struck on Aug. 29, 2005, she was still getting her mail sent to Houston, although she had made the arduous journey back to the stricken city, of New Orleans, not once, but twice.
Although weakened when it struck the Gulf Coast, Katrina was the strongest storm at sea in recorded history, slamming into the coast of Louisiana and Mississippi causing catastrophic damage and flooding 80 percent of New Orleans and areas around it for weeks. More than 4,000 people died, more than 700 are still listed as missing. One estimate claimed more than six million pets and farm animals died in the disaster.
Like many people who had lived in the region prior to the storm, Dufrene lost nearly everything, returning to her home to find it in ruins.
Born and raised in Bayonne on Andrews Street, she said Bayonne remains in her heart, and that she kept looking for cars with New Jersey license plates long as she relocated to the Gulf Coast.
Bayonne played a critical role after the disaster, Dufrene said.
“I have a very good friend, Rosa Liga, who became my link when I was trying to reach my son,” she said. “Our area code was knocked out completely so he could reach me. So I would call Bayonne and Rosa passed along the messages.”
Later, when she and her son got separated while fleeing the storm, she kept in touch with him via her friend in Bayonne.
Seeking shelter from the storm
Dufrene lived in North Kenner, one of the areas hit hard during the 2005 hurricane. Most of the parish (like our counties) was under water, many of the roads impassible because of flooding, downed power lines and fallen trees. Many of the homes throughout the area were damaged from wind or falling trees. The parish had no electricity, fresh water or working sewerage systems. Early on, many of the pumps to relieve flooding did not work.
“I live near the air port. I was going to stay,” she said. “I didn’t want to leave my animals.”
She had six when the storm hit, and inherited three more after the storm. Most of the pets and animals in the area died.
Her son insisted she evacuate, and since all the animals wouldn’t fit in the car, they took the work van.
“It took 14 hours to get out of the New Orleans area,” she said. “We were stuck on the causeway.”
A huge percent of the population was seeking to relocate to higher ground, and she called it a miserable experience. She wound up staying in a camp ground, but this was overcrowded with refugees, too.
Although some hotel rooms were available during her trip, she couldn’t use them because of the animals.
At one point the van broke down while her son sought to get a room in a nearby town.
“He said he was going to Lafayette to find a room,” she said.
He promised to return when he got the truck fixed.
At one point, she talked to her daughter in Germany via phone.
“She told me my block was getting looted,” she said.
At one point, she lost contact with her son. But she was able to get back into contact, while still desperately searching for a place to stay that would allow her to keep her cats.
At one park shelter, buses kept arriving with people from the Superdome. Area people also make use of a Wal-Mart store as a shelter.
She kept hearing stories about what was happening back home, about levies breaking and disaster. She also heard stories about people’s struggles, such as the grandmother who had walked many miles to the Superdome with her grandchild.
“I had to leave the shelter because they would not allow pets,” she said
Eventually, she found a place shelter that allowed her to keep her pets, but she slept outside on a bench with fleas and red ants.
Her home was a wreck
Days passed and she got the urge to go home. She left her animals at the shelter and made the long trek back to the disaster area.
“I snuck back home in late September,” she said. “I had to sneak into the area. They weren’t letting anyone in.”
She found things even worse than she thought.
“There were no stores open,” she said. “No street lights worked and trees were down. The place looked like bombed out Baghdad.”
While the water had receded in the weeks since the storm, she found the roof blown off her building and mold throughout. She found snakes in her yard.
She knew the animals in the area would be hungry, and brought food with her to feed them.
“But there were so many animals starving,” she said.
Many were injured.
“One cat had two holes in its back,” she said.
During her stay, she managed to save two Labrador retrievers and two cats.
“My son asked me if I was crazy rescuing and feeding the animals,” she said. “I told him no one is helping them so I had to.”
But she remembers how authorities were forced to shoot many of former pets and other animals because of fear of disease.
She said, however, the military was wonderful, helping her to get fresh water.
“Still I could only handle it for two days,” she said.
She left her home again to Alexandria, where she heard the news that another hurricane, Rita, was rapidly approaching.
Since she was living outside at the time, she had to relocate again, and remembers being part of a caravan of vans that eventually settled in an abandoned nursing home. They had no electricity or running water, and reports said they were in the path of several tornados
“We spent two days there,” she said. “People got sick. I got sick.”
She said she has since come to appreciate what it means to take a shower, and to understand what it feels like to be homeless.
She finally went home
Finally, after the storms passed, she made up her mind to return to the New Orleans area.
“I had no place to go and I didn’t see a point of driving around on the highway with my cats screaming,” she said. “So I went back to New Orleans.”
For months afterwards, she lived in a trailer dealing with the various bureaucratic issues that followed the disaster such as dealing with insurance companies.
Electricity slowly returned. Fresh water again flowed. The stores opened their doors.
“We did better than many places because we have a good mayor in Kenner,” she said.
Yet Dufrene said through the whole disaster, the weeks and months of feeling homeless, Bayonne remained a life line that she could count one.
“Rosa Liga is my best friend and has been for life. We have a true friendship and she was my life line. Without her being there in Bayonne for me I couldn’t have done it. I had to call out of state to find out what was going on.”
She said one of the big concerns about the disaster and the recovery was the lack of programs for animals.
“I saw so many dead animals that it was heart breaking,” she said. “I had Cottonmouth snakes in my yard. My neighbors had alligators. I found myself not just feeding the cats and dogs, but the opossums and raccoons, too.”