Surviving Hurricane Katrina: First-Hand Accounts from the Storm

In the early morning hours of August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina slammed into New Orleans. While most of the city’s residents had safely evacuated, hundreds of thousands were trapped in their homes when the Category 3 storm made landfall. Thousands more had taken shelter inside the Superdome.  

Then the levees failed, unleashing catastrophic flooding across New Orleans. Some of the city’s poorest neighborhoods were hardest hit and rescue efforts were painfully slow. When the waters finally receded, nearly 2,000 New Orleans residents were dead and hundreds of thousands had lost their homes.  

What follows are six powerful stories, recorded in 2015, about the harrowing days of Hurricane Katrina. They’re told by people who were there—helicopter rescue workers, Superdome survivors and unlikely heroes.  

Laurence “Noodles” Nettles had been in the U.S. Coast Guard three years but nothing prepared him for Katrina. “We saw houses underwater. We saw houses on fire,” says Nettles. “It was surreal.” Working for days without sleep, Nettles rescued people trapped in the rising waters. He suffered PTSD from the things he witnessed, but he believes that Katrina was the Coast Guard’s finest moment. “We were there during the storm. We were there after the storm. We were there.” 

Angela Trahan’s mom and aunt both worked in the kitchen of St. Stanislaus College, a Catholic boarding school in New Orleans. When Katrina was coming, Angela’s mom refused to leave “her boys.” But when the kitchen flooded, it was Brother Ronald Hingle and other St. Stanislaus staff who pulled Trahan and her family to safety. It's a moment she’ll never forget. “They risked their lives to come and save us.”  

Like thousands of others, New Orleans poet Shelton Alexander was forced to wait out the storm inside the Superdome. Conditions inside the dome quickly deteriorated as bathrooms backed up and food ran out. When the levee breached, they were told they couldn’t leave. “Now you feel like you’re a prisoner,” says Alexander. Against orders, Alexander escaped and found his truck miraculously spared from the flood. He was able to drive all 20 people from his parish back home. “They talk about survivor’s guilt. I think of all the people I had to pass by.” 

John Keller served in the Marine Corps, but his greatest mission happened at home in New Orleans. When it became clear that no one was coming to rescue the 240 people trapped in his apartment building, Keller took charge. “Once a Marine, always a Marine,” he says. Keller was able to hot-wire boats and ferry the residents to a spit of dry land where they could be evacuated by helicopter. “He stayed until everybody in the American Can apartments had been rescued,” says a neighbor. “That’s my definition of a hero.”   

Robert Green and six of his family members were on the roof of their home in the Lower 9th Ward when the entire house was swept away in the current. Two of Green’s loved ones died in the flood—his elderly mother and his 3-year-old granddaughter. “If you understand God’s grace, you don’t question it,” Green says. When the waters receded, Green was determined to rebuild his ravaged neighborhood.

The motto of Charity Hospital in New Orleans was “Where the Unusual Occurs and Miracles Happen.” When power went out during Katrina, the doctors and nurses of Charity Hospital worked around the clock to keep hundreds of critically ill patients alive. When no rescue came, the strained staff refused to leave until every last patient was brought to safety. “Those days following Hurricane Katrina were our finest hour,” remembers one of the ICU doctors. “It wasn’t heroic. We were just doing our jobs.”