Katrina chaos - Denton Record Chronicle
She collected her laptop, 2-year-old puppy and road-trip entertainment for Maraida, her 8-year-old daughter. A Category 5 hurricane was nearing the Gulf Coast and threatening to flood Trish Brooks’ home in Marrero, Louisiana, a community 10 miles south of New Orleans on the West Bank of the Mississippi River. Brooks thought Hurricane Katrina would last only the weekend. She became one of the 400,000 displaced New Orleans-area residents, according to a 2009 U. S. Census Bureau Housing Survey. The storm would cause an estimated $108 billion in damage to the Gulf coastline and broke the levees in New Orleans. “I had never evacuated before,” Brooks said. Ten years later, Brooks, 44, works with special education students at Denton High School. With this year’s anniversary, she reflects on her hectic journey from New Orleans to Denton after the costliest hurricane in history ravaged her hometown. Evacuation The day before Katrina made landfall, Brooks was sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic on U. S. Highway 90 with a wave of evacuees. Brooks had to resist the urge to watch the news in front of her young daughter. Source: www.dentonrc.com
