Mississippi Twister

The tornado that ripped through Mississippi and parts of Louisiana Saturday morning left Eagle Lake, Miss., with plenty of property damage but relatively unscathed residents, law enforcement officials said.

The storm, which touched down in Eagle Lake around 11:30 a.m., damaged from 65 to 70 homes, Warren County Sheriff Martin Pace said, but just two people in the town had minor cuts and abrasions. Neither was hospitalized. Ten people were confirmed dead and hundreds more homes were destroyed in other Mississippi counties.

Eagle Lake is primarily a resort community where homeowners come to spend weekends, Pace said, and not many people were there that weekend because of weather forecasts.

“It was supposed to be rainy and gloomy for the weekend… It was actually very fortunate,” Pace said. “We could have very easily had multiple fatalities.”

Homeowners and residents agreed they were lucky that nobody was hurt in their neighborhood.

Nancy Wilson said her children had planned to be at her vacation house for the weekend, but her son was called in to work Saturday.

The house, which sits on the very edge of the lake, is practically broken in two, the lake-side half sagging dangerously down the bank. Wilson picked her way through the wrecked rooms, stopping to pick up a plaque of a serenity prayer.

“Thank the good Lord they weren’t here,” Wilson said before entering her bedroom and laughing aloud at the curious sight – though the roof had collapsed in more than half the room and debris was thrown everywhere, the quilt was still meticulously in place on her bed.

Nancy Wilson takes stock of what once was a bedroom in her vacation home in Eagle Lake, Miss., Sunday, April  25, a day after a tornado ripped through the town.  Wilson, who lives about two hours away in Sand Hill, Miss., said somebody from her family is usually at the vacation home about once a week.

“If [the tornado] had to hit, this is the best possible place for it to hit,” Wilson’s neighbor Rodney Walters said. Walters is a full-time resident of Eagle Lake, but had little damage to his home.

Not all full-time residents were as lucky, however. Cyndi Booth, 54, has rented her home in Eagle Lake for six years. She lives there with only her dog and her eight cats, and was home during the storm.

When she turned her TV on Saturday, Booth saw the tornado was actually on the lake, which is about a quarter-mile down the road from her house. She gathered her animals and went into her bathroom to take shelter.

Booth said she heard the roar and felt her house shaking. Then the wind picked her home up in the air and slammed it back down onto the foundation. It was over in a matter of minutes, she said.

Though Booth and her pets were unharmed, when she emerged from the bathroom she found five trees had fallen on and around her house, including one blocking the door.

“I still was so shaken by everything that I was like, ‘What do I do?’” Booth said. She eventually worked the door open far enough that she could squeeze through and got out.

Despite the absence of injuries and deaths, damage to homes was very severe, Sheriff Martin Pace said. Eleven of the Eagle Lake homes reported as damaged were completely destroyed, Sheriff Martin Pace said. Several more homes may end up being razed, pending insurance assessments.

Though the community is thankful there were no deaths in the town, the Saturday’s tornado devastated many homes like this one, only about a quarter mile from the lakefront. “This is the worst property damage from a tornado since I’ve been in office,” said Warren County Sheriff Martin Pace, who has been in his position since 1996.

Johnnie Nosser was in Eagle Lake cleaning up the property where his mother owned a vacation house. The house was completely blown away. Nosser watched smoke rise from the pile of rubble he had lit on fire in the place where the building once sat.

“It meant a lot to us,” Nosser said of the 54-year-old house. “I was a little boy when my father built it.”

Two generations of their family grew up coming to Eagle Lake for weekends and vacations, Nosser’s niece, Cathi Vernine, said.

“This place defined us growing up,” Vernine said.

The Red Cross had a temporary shelter set up at Eagle Lake Baptist Church, but nobody used it, according to Pace, so they closed it. Displaced residents have been choosing to stay with family and friends, he said.

The clean up will continue for some time, Pace said, and the sheriff’s department is trying to keep the area somewhat cordoned off, denying access to sight-seers and only allowing media in under escort.

“We’re maintaining a heavy law enforcement presence in that area,” Pace said. “So far we’ve had no problems. Everybody has been very respectful of the damage to their neighbors’ property.”

Song in sorrow: frustration and faith in New Orleans' Haitian community

Sarilia Sally Francois, right, raises her arms in prayer during the morning service at First Haitian Baptist Church March 21 in Gretna, La.

Story by Gabrielle Porter, Photos by Leah Millis
For more of Leah Millis' work, visit http://leahkmillis.wordpress.com/

Singing seeps through the white-washed walls of plain cinder-block building near the industrial sector on Louisiana’s West Bank, just across the Mississippi River from New Orleans.

 

Entering the sanctuary, the deafening sound is disproportionate to the some 200 regular members of the First Haitian Baptist Church in Gretna, La. A small band in the corner is amplified to an extreme volume, and the people singing are not merely murmuring the words. With heads thrown back, some hands raised and eyes often shut tight, the congregation sways while belting the alternately French and Creole tunes with all its collective lung power.

 

The March 21 service is a special event for the church — the pastor, Rev. Joseph Blanchard, has just returned, along with three others, from a five-day relief trip back to Haiti. Blanchard and his small team delivered about $7,000 collected during previous weeks from church members and people from the community to Haitian churches and individuals recuperating from the recent earthquake in Port-au-Prince.

 

The Jan. 12 earthquake that devastated Haiti’s capital and the surrounding area has personally impacted every attendant of the church, church and community leaders said.

 

“All of us have somebody,” said Jean Wesner, a real estate agent and leader in the Haitian community in Louisiana. Wesner himself lost a cousin in the disaster.

 

The U.S. Geological Survey website states that the 7.0 magnitude quake killed an estimated 222,570 people, injured 300,000 others and left about 1.3 million displaced.

Yvenine Nerval, center, is mobbed by a crowd of children after the evening service at First Haitian Baptist Church March 21 in Gretna, La. The children hugged her goodbye after the congregation prayed for her, wishing her luck and safe journeys before her expected departure to culinary school in Florida.

Recalling the days after: trying to make contact

 

Jean-Renel Jeudy said he believes he was the probably first Haitian in New Orleans to hear the news about the earthquake when he turned on CNN around 5:45 the next morning. He immediately started calling friends to let them know what had happened.

 

“When I called them, they tried to contact Haiti automatically,” Jeudy said. “Everybody tried to call their parents.”

 

Phone lines were still down the next day but news agencies had a little more information — none of it comforting, Jeudy said.

 

“People begging for their lives under the bricks, and people lose other people, the people missing each other,” Jeudy recalled of what he saw on the news. “I called my sister, I called all our family here… My daughter tried to get on Facebook and so many other things to try and contact them.”

 

Between two and three weeks passed before Jeudy heard from family members in Haiti letting him know they were safe.

 

Impact on the church

 

Gerlanie Jean-Pierre, a Harvey, La., resident and native Haitian, described the scene at the church the Sunday following the quake as one of uncontrolled grief.

 

“Everybody was crying… We went to church, everybody was right there on the floor. Nobody was sitting in the chairs,” Jean-Pierre said. “Nobody was sitting in the benches. Everybody was down.”

 

People couldn't even bring themselves to pray, Jean-Pierre said

 

“Everybody was crying, even the pastor,” she said.

 

Private grief

 

Jean-Pierre and her husband lost seven family members between them. Jean-Pierre, who moved to the U.S. from Haiti almost 19 years ago, said her family was mostly in Carrefour, one of the worst affected areas of Port-au-Prince.

 

Jean-Pierre’s husband’s aunt lived nearby in Harvey, and had been on a month-long visit to family in Haiti. She died when the earthquake hit just five days before her return flight to the U.S. Jean-Pierre said there are some days she can’t face the woman’s five adult children who live in Louisiana.

 

“They cry every day. Sometimes I can’t even call them. When I call them, they cry about mama. ‘Do you hear from my mama,’” Jean-Pierre said.  “When you have your mama die, no funeral or nothing, you’re still thinking, ‘My mama might come back.’”

 

Millions still displaced

 

Jean-Pierre now lives with her husband, her two children and her elderly mother. From her home, she said knowing her family in Port-au-Prince is still homeless is as painful as the actual earthquake was.

 

“They live like animals right now.  They live outside all day and sleep outside,” Jean-Pierre said. “It’s very bad.”

 

Since the earthquake, Jean-Pierre said she has been haunted by the knowledge of the people still in the middle of the tragedy.

 

“I lost five pounds. I can’t eat, I can’t sleep,” she said. “I stay away from the television and I try to pray too. That’s what helps me.”

 Anita Richards sings passionately during the evening service at First Haitian Baptist Church March 21 in Gretna, La. Richard has been living in New Orleans for 30 years and has been a member of the church since 1985.

 

Jeudy said the aid coming from different agencies is not reaching Carrefour, where he also has family.

 

He too said he finds it frustrating to see the images on TV of people waiting in line for food, knowing his family members are among them and being powerless to help them.

 

“That makes us cry, because we have food here,” Jeudy said. “We got food, we got water, we got juice.”

 

Jeudy is also worried about his family’s health as they live in the streets with the rainy season fast approaching, and sickness bound to start spreading.

 

Jeudy’s 16-year-old niece Douneba Thamard came to the U.S. with two of her sisters after the earthquake.

 

The rest of her family is still in Port-au-Prince. Though their house wasn’t leveled, it is too dangerously damaged to live in, Thamard said.

 

Thamard's father tells her in his occasional phone calls that he is happy she can be in the U.S., but the family’s situation is still precarious.

“He’s still sleeping in the street,” Thamard said through an interpreter. “They can’t sleep in their house.”

 

Thamard is enrolled in school in Louisiana, and would go back to Haiti if the schools were rebuilt.

 

“But if they don’t build yet, I can’t go,” she said. “I’m scared to go back again and to live in the street again.”

 

Immigration delays frustrate

 

Jean-Pierre and her husbands are U.S. citizens, and have been trying to get her visas for her sister-in-law and her family since 1999, but the paperwork still hasn’t gone through. Jean-Pierre thought after the earthquake, immigration would push them through the system faster, but there’s still no word. Meanwhile, her sister-in-law is growing desperate for her seven children.

 Deacon Jean W. Alexis, center, prays for Heroine Neval, lower right, and her daughter, Yvenine Nerval, with other members of the congregation at the end of the evening service at First Haitian Baptist Church March 21 in Gretna, La. The community was blessing Yvenine before her expected journey to culinary school in Florida

 

“It’s very terrible, they have no school, nothing,” Jean-Pierre said. “[My sister-in-law] calls us every time, every week… she says, ‘I’m going to die down here with my children because they still didn’t call yet?’”

 

Jeudy and his sister, who also lives in Louisiana, are also both U.S. citizens. They recently started applications for visas for three of their family members, but have no idea how long the process will take.

“I’d leave tomorrow if they [would] tell us to go back and pick them up [from Haiti],” Jeudy said. “I’d pay for my flight ticket and come pick them up. But it’s not easy that way.”

 

Wesner said he and other community leaders are still trying to deal with post-earthquake immigration policies. Whereas in the past, a Haitian living in the U.S. might have had to wait a year or so to bring a parent over, and around 10 years for a sibling or another relative, Wesner said he hopes wait times will be shorter now.

 

Those who are able to relocate to the U.S. remain unemployed

 

Those who have been able to come to the U.S. don’t find their problems solved, however. Stanley Adam, a 27-year-old Haitian, came to the U.S. just 12 days after the earthquake by escorting his young nephew, a U.S. citizen. Adam is from Croix-des-Bouquets, a town about 8 miles northeast of Port-au-Prince, and his girlfriend and two young children are still there.

 

Adam was a taxi driver in Haiti, but he cannot work in the U.S. He lives with his brother and sister-in-law in Louisiana, and increasingly feels like a burden on them.  He’s worked his whole life, Adam said, and hates having to be dependent, all the while knowing that his family back home is without him.

 

Jeudy’s brother-in-law Fortuné Jean-Louis is in a similar situation. A father of five, one of his sons is a U.S. citizen, born while Jean-Louis’ wife was on a business trip in the U.S.  Now Jean-Louis, a former union supervisor for a transportation company, finds himself in the U.S. without anything to do.

 

“I’m so young, [but] I can’t work,” Jean-Louis said through an interpreter. “I am just sitting, doing nothing... I have to go back to my country, even the way it is, because I have to work and take care of the rest of my family… I don’t have any choice, I have to go back. I can’t stay here like this.”

 

Where to from here

 

As everybody at the church was impacted they all have lists of family members they want to bring to the U.S., Wesner said.

 

“We have more people coming,” Wesner said, “We’re trying to get ready.”

             

Wesner said the community here wants to take this process one step at a time — they’re not worrying about where family members will work just yet. Dealing with immigration is their priority right now; jobs and homes will be sorted out later.

Ignoring long-term resettlement issues will not be an option for long, though, Wesner said. With the impending Haitian population spike in Louisiana will come the matters of support, employment and housing.

 

“It’s not going to be easy for them,” Wesner said.

Missing Home

I've never really loved Colorado. I've loved being in Colorado, I've enjoyed time spent in Colorado - my family and friends are all there, and they, as far as I am concerned, are what make it worthwhile.

I hate cold. November to April are usually intolerable - short days with little light, the ground muddy if not actually snowy, no green on trees even if the air is warm. It never rains in Colorado. Last winter seemed particularly windy and miserable. It's not like Colorado is a universal hub on which the world turns, either, in the grand scheme of things. You never hear of fashions or trends starting in Broomfield, or the abundance of great minds populating Highlands Ranch. Denver isn't backwater, but it's no New York City.

My high school to college years have so far followed a certain pattern - I save the money I earn at whatever non-descript and un-fulfilling diner, hotel or catering service I happen to be working at for a number of months. I don't go out much, I never buy new clothes and I always unplug my cell phone charger when I leave home
(on a dentist's waiting room television, I saw a commercial saying this saves energy - I had no idea before that). Then, usually in a matter of days, I catch a fancy to go somewhere - to stop by, visit or, in some cases, to actually move there. And I go, and I use all my money, usually down to the last two or three dollars in my checking account.

Before coming to Louisiana, I loved everywhere I had been. When the time comes to go home, I was always unwilling, always mentally calculating how long it would take me to find a job back in Denver and save up to come back.

When I came home from Thailand, I kept a bottle of "prickly heat" powder by my bed - the kind I put on my neck and arms when the humidity overwhelmed me. Of course, I never needed it in mile-high Denver, but the smell made me think of Bangkok, drinking orange juice from a plastic bag and being much too long-legged for the buses. During my spring break adventure to Manhattan with my little brother, we marveled at the rampant bagel-stand-on-a-street-corner phenomenon and wondered whether it would be a worthwhile investment for our family to bring it back to Denver. (It wouldn't have been.) My summer in Oregon with my childhood best friend and her family was a continuance of my long-term love affair with the entire Northwest region - the clear rivers for swimming in, the mysterious forests, the intellectuals and those aspiring to intellect, the pervasive presence of musicians everywhere, everything about it captured me.

I had a sneaking feeling that, should the time ever come when I wanted to settle down, I'd have an awful time trying to decide where, simply because there are so many places I love and want to know better.

And then I came here.

I had heard a lot about New Orleans before I came. It seemed foreign, it seemed different. People who talked about it used phrases like "so full of culture," "colorful," "distinctive personality." All the phrases, in other words, that bode well for a new city.

Too be fair, by the way, all those things are true. I've met truly fascinating people here. It really is like nowhere else on earth. But for the first time in my gypsy life, I've found myself longing for home. Colorado. Aching to be back.

But... I just am sort of tired of it here. I don't like the way it smells - like dirty humidity. I have a crazy neighbor who torments me. I don't have local friends. The dogs in peoples' yards here are rabidly aggressive. I'm even beginning to resent the excruciatingly slow pace people at the grocery stores work. Swipe......... swipe......... swipe....... and I'm thinking, for the love of everything GOOD, it's four yogurts, they're ALL THE SAME, JUST PUT THEM IN THE BAG!!! And don't even get me started on the parades. All I have to about them is, if I get stuck behind a barricade for another three hour ordeal, I'm going to run a New Orleans policeman right over with my hardy little Jeep.

I'm coming unhinged.

I know, of course, most of this feeling comes from where I am at personally, or spiritually. But it's just so unlike me to want to be back in Colorado! To be so homesick that I dedicate a whole blog post to it? That's not me.

A few days ago, I was chatting with a woman at an event I was covering - she was from Florida but married to a Louisianan, and we were talking about missing our respective families. What is Colorado like, she asked me. Oh, it's beautiful, I said immediately. I started talking about how the weather is usually wonderful, it's never humid, the mountains are so close and so majestic! The sky in Colorado during the sunset is otherworldly. There are parks just peppering Denver where you can go to walk or read or meet friends. My family's house is so homey, and right now the crocuses are probably already blooming out front unless the boys have already trampled them all in pursuit of errant basketballs like they do eventually every year...

I don't remember exactly how much I said, but I eventually became aware of what I was doing. When, I asked myself silently, have I ever idealized and romanticized like this before? Who knew of all this deep well of Colorado love bubbling up inside me? I'd occasionally noticed (and scorned) some friends of mine do this before - the friends who went to school out of state.

But I am the adventurous one, the wandering girl, the perpetually wayfaring stranger. Homesick, for the first time. In fact, I am almost excited that I even have the ability to be homesick. It's adding a certain sweetness to my approaching trip home.

This winter, I'll almost certainly be thinking longingly of a land without snow and ice, but this summer, I'll be in heaven - I'll be in Colorado.