Stranded
Livingston mother recalls the lucky breaks as she and her son fled New Orleans

by Johanna Ginsberg
NJJN Staff Writer

The wind started around midnight, and it sounded like a train was coming through for eight hours. Around 6:30 a.m., the windows started breaking. We sat quietly for the next four hours in the hallway listening to the wind howling, the glass breaking….”

That’s how Linda Levi of Livingston described her experience during the onslaught of Hurricane Katrina, which she spent with her son, Jesse, a senior at Livingston High School, in the Windsor Court Hotel in downtown New Orleans.

The pair had traveled to the Big Easy to look at Tulane University. Jesse had an interview scheduled for Monday, Aug. 29, at 9 a.m. They arrived Saturday afternoon, Aug. 27, just as the city was beginning to evacuate.

“As soon as we got settled into our hotel, the airport closed and the city battened down for the storm,” Levi recalled in a telephone interview from her home. “The news kept telling people to go, and we had no transportation out.” Luckily, their hotel welcomed them and other guests and offered refuge to staff members (and their families and pets) with nowhere else to go. Levi looked out her window, she said, and saw “people from other hotels roaming around outside, not knowing what to do.”

She described the view outside her window as “white” during the hurricane.

But by 10 a.m. on Monday, the hurricane had passed. “Skies were blue, and as the day wore on, everyone began to celebrate,” said Levi. “Things began to feel normal. I figured Jesse would still be able to have his interview, perhaps rescheduled for Tuesday.” Of course, the levee broke that night, changing everything.

On Tuesday, she said, “we looked out the window and watched people outside rioting and breaking into places.” Plans she had made to depart were postponed a day when a SWAT team announced that no one could leave the hotel. “The fear and unknown of the aftermath was far worse than the hurricane itself, because there was no help in the city,” said Levi. “There was no plan, no control, no police presence.”

Finally, early Wednesday, Levi and Jesse got out of New Orleans in a caravan with several other cars. Levi had having befriended a group from California who had secured a rental car. They followed “a circuitous route” out of New Orleans toward Baton Rouge. “I was so happy to be in the back seat of that little Hyundai,” she said.

When the caravan arrived in Baton Rouge, she said, “we saw a sign for Starbucks and gas.” They went inside and celebrated their escape. Then the group in the Hyundai headed for Houston, where the Levis would catch a flight home. “When we got to the Texas border, the endorphins kicked in. I was so grateful to get to safety.”

Now, as Jesse considers his academic options for college, his mother said, “I’m not sure Jesse will go to Tulane.”

Johanna Ginsberg can be reached at jginsberg@njjewishnews.com.