Tyler

By DANNY MOGLE
Assistant Managing Editor

These are anxious hours for Ralph Thomas.

Thomas has loved ones who live in New Orleans. Although his relatives are already moving to safer areas, he can’t help but worry.

He knows what they are going through.

Three years ago, he was living in New Orleans when deadly Hurricane Katrina ripped through the city, producing a storm surge that broke through levees and submerged his neighborhood.

“I spent two and a half days waiting on my roof waiting to be rescued,” said Thomas, who works in the warehouse of East Texas Food Bank and now is part of the local effort to help the evacuees of Hurricane Gustav.

On Sunday morning, Thomas and other food bank workers were preparing pallets of food to be moved from the warehouse in Tyler to emergency shelters around the city.

Thomas said he was unwilling to evacuate before Katrina because his mother-in-law had just received open-heart surgery and was medically too fragile to be moved. His wife remained by her bedside at the hospital.


“I didn’t want to go without them,” Thomas said.

When the water began rising, all Thomas could do was scramble on top of his roof and wait and pray. The fresh water he brought with him was almost gone when he was rescued.

He was eventually evacuated to Houston and his wife and mother-in-law were sent to Fort Worth. It took weeks before they were reunited at the home of relatives living in Tyler.

After Katrina, Thomas stayed in Tyler.

He said in his time of need, many people offered a helping hand.

“It is a blessing to be able to help somebody else,” Thomas said of his role in disaster relief.

He said his relatives who stayed in New Orleans heeded early warnings and evacuated. He hopes everyone gets out of the path of the powerful storm.

“The people (along the Gulf Coast) should do what officials are telling them to do,” Thomas said. “This is a serious situation.”

Ralph Thomas, who now lives and works in Tyler, spent three days on the roof of his New Orleans home waiting to be rescued after Hurricane Katrina.
(Staff Photo by Danny Mogle)