Katrina evacuation leads to new beginning in Nashville
Kim Chaudoin | 615.966.6494 |
As much of the southern portion of the United States was pummeled by Hurricane Harvey and Hurricane Irma in recent weeks and scenes of destruction left in their wake has been ever-present on news outlets across the country, images of another storm came to Suzonne Reed’s mind.
Katrina.
Early on the morning of Aug. 29, 2005, Katrina, classified as a Category 3 hurricane at the time, struck the Gulf Coast bringing with it sustained winds of 100-140 miles per hour and stretched some 400 miles across. The storm itself did a great deal of damage, but its aftermath was catastrophic, particularly in the New Orleans area. Levee breaches led to massive flooding. It was estimated that Katrina caused more than $100 billion in damage, and hundreds of thousands of residents in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama were displaced from their homes.
Reed, her husband and their three young children were among them. Katrina uprooted the Reeds from their native New Orleans and sent them on a journey that led them to an unexpected destination — Nashville.
In the days leading up to Katrina making land fall, Reed and her family secured some of their treasured possessions in the second story of her parents’ house then loaded up the car for the drill they had become all too familiar with over the years — evacuating their home in anticipation of a hurricane.
“We knew a storm was coming, but we had evacuated many, many times before,” recalls Reed who began work at Lipscomb University as project manager and administrative assistant in the Office of University Communication & Marketing this summer. “But we never really had any floods that were severe or affected my family in any way. It was always false alarms. We viewed these times of evacuation as vacation, and the kids would cheer when they didn’t have school. When we heard the storm was coming, we figured it was another three-day vacation.”
The Reeds planned to visit relatives in Dallas on this “vacation.” They only planned on being gone for three days — just long enough for the storm to pass. So they packed clothing for the short visit, loaded up the children, Reed’s parents and the family dog in a minivan and began their trip.
“We each brought three outfits. The kids did not bring any toys, because we were not going to be gone long,” she says.
Traffic on the interstate to Dallas was gridlock with thousands of residents evacuating the Gulf Coast area.
“It was so packed on the interstate that to make it from New Orleans to Slidell which is going east to loop around to head out — it took three hours to go a distance that usually took 45 minutes,” says Reed. “We were just sitting there and my husband suddenly says, ‘We’re going north, call your sister. We’re going to take 59 and we’re going to go to Franklin (Tennessee).’ They told us to come on, but little did they know we would be there for quite a while.”
The Reeds soon learned their home, located about five miles away from Lake Pontchartrain, survived the actual hurricane. But when the levees broke things changed.
“I had been taking a nap and my brother-in-law told me to wake up, that our house had flooded,” she says. “They were showing scenes on TV, and it was like we were watching a movie.”
The Reeds stayed in Franklin with her sister and brother-in-law for about seven weeks. She and her husband went down to New Orleans to salvage what they could, to rebuild their home and to sell it “for about half” of what they bought it for.
Nashville has become home now to the Reeds for the last 12 years. Children Vincent and Maddie are students at Lipscomb Academy and Ben is a student at Texas A&M. Reed says they are very happy in their new hometown. She says good did result from their experience.
“God did use something terrible for good. It’s really hard to see at the moment the good that can come from it,” she recalls. “Part of it can just be a wake up call to what really matters in life. It changes you. Part of it can be seeing how people reach out.”
“It brought a lot of unity,” she continues. “A lot of people didn’t go back to New Orleans, but people will remember how people stepped up after the fact – even if the planning wasn’t good initially and maybe there are a lot of things that could have been avoided, I think the love outweighed all of that just in the kindness that was shown.”
Hear more of Reed’s story in the video above.
—Video by Josh Shaw