Posted 11:55 am Sunday, August 29, 2010
New Orleans Family Finds Sense Of Home In East Texas
Katrina Evacuees 5 Years Later: Putting Down Roots
By MELISSA CROWE
Staff Writer
FLINT -- The Mercadals are the type of family that kiss.
Staff Writer
FLINT -- The Mercadals are the type of family that kiss.
"If you're at the supermarket and see someone you know, you kiss," family matriarch Drusilla Mercadal said.
When they lived in New Orleans, her husband, Tommy, joked that they must have had a sign advertising "nursery" in their front yard.
They are the type of family most comfortable when surrounded by friends and children, food and laughter.
New Orleans had "a spirit of love," she said. "If you're hungry, they'll feed you. You miss those things."
Before they moved to Tyler five years ago, the Mercadals had never heard of the city.
Mrs. Mercadal told her daughters, Kaitlyn, Ariel and Nicole, to pack three days worth of clothes. They thought it would be a mini-vacation.
ABOVE: Tommy Mercadal flips through photos of what was left of his home after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans.
She worked in information technology at Dillard University in New Orleans on the Friday before Katrina hit.
The National Hurricane Center issued a hurricane warning for the city that Saturday morning. She went back to work that afternoon to help back up the computers.
The next day, the mayor issued a mandatory evacuation.
The Mercadals left New Orleans at 2 a.m. that Sunday. Mrs. Mercadal remembers the drive to Tyler being easy.
"I printed out a map of Texas and said, 'Lord, guide me to the best place -- other than Houston -- to evacuate,'" Mrs. Mercadal said.
Her husband, a New Orleans police officer, stayed behind at the Louisiana Superdome.
"We weren't planning that we were going to be here a while," Mrs. Mercadal said.
Her husband stayed nine days at the Superdome, "until the last person left," he said.
The city gave him a day off to drive to Tyler and see his family, but he had to be back at work the next day.
Mrs. Mercadal already had charged more than $1,500 on her credit card to pay for five hotel rooms for her and her family.
After two weeks of hotels, Mrs. Mercadal and her daughters went back to the city.
"I was shocked; I didn't believe it," she said.
Katrina turned their world upside down.
Walking by, you could see right inside their tan brick house on the east side of the city. Katrina had torn a wall off. Everything in their living room was gone.
Walking by, you could see right inside their tan brick house on the east side of the city. Katrina had torn a wall off. Everything in their living room was gone.
Hurricane Katrina caused more than $81 billion in damage and was the costliest hurricane in U.S. history, according to the National Hurricane Center.
At its strongest, Katrina's winds were at 150 mph.
According to information from the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals, 1,464 Louisiana residents died during the hurricane.
The weight of Katrina sunk in when Mrs. Mercadal and her family went to a shelter in Tyler.
"We were upset," she said. "The reality hit: You can't go back home; you don't have a home to go back to."
They rented an apartment in Tyler from August to December before attempting to move back to Louisiana.
With the help of the Rev. Roy Theone at First Baptist Church in Gresham, the family got clothes, furniture and found a church home.
"Mentally, you need to have some stability," she said. "By renting that apartment, we felt like we had control of our own destiny."
But in December, they decided to move back to New Orleans. For three months, they lived on a cruise ship.
Mrs. Mercadal and her husband were together in one room, and her daughters were in another hall.
They met for dinner every night to preserve what was left of their family feeling.
Although they were in the city they called home, it felt foreign.
"You long to open the door and say, 'I'm home!'" Mrs. Mercadal said. "It was hard; it was taking a toll. There was nothing that looked normal."
They considered rebuilding their house and starting over in New Orleans, but Mrs. Mercadal said she did not want to force her daughters through the daunting experience.
Insurance money was not coming in, and the family needed to find stability and a more permanent home.
In September 2006, they bought a house in East Texas.
Despite the conditions and pressure under which they moved to Tyler, the Mercadals achieved that feeling of "home."
Their statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary was one of the few salvageable items from their New Orleans home. It stands near the doorway on a rock pedestal at their new house.
Mercadal said the family would not have made it through all the uncertainty without "the outpouring of support and generosity from East Texas."
"Even though we didn't know anything about Tyler, we felt comfortable about being here," he said.
Mrs. Mercadal said being so far from their family -- most of whom moved back to New Orleans -- is difficult. Their farthest relative lived only 30 minutes away.
"Holidays are a hard time," she said. They rarely are able to make birthday parties or house blessings -- family events their lives once centered on.
But in the meantime, the family is blessed, she said.
"You can't wonder why; you just have to keep moving," she said.
