Patrice Melnick
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ROWELL: What did you do when you found out that Hurricane Katrina was approaching New Orleans?
MELNICK: I actually didn't know it was coming. My husband lives in Grand Coteau, Louisiana, and that's two hours and fifteen minutes away from here. It's between Opelousas and Lafayette.
I go to Grand Coteau every weekend. When I was done with classes on Thursday, I drove home to Grand Coteau. I packed a light bag for the weekend and drove home. Then I watched the weather on TV, and I thought the hurricane was going to Florida. Later I watched the weather, and I saw it was going to come to New Orleans. I actually didn't worry, just as you have probably heard from other people in interviews saying, "Oh yeah. They come all the time. Nothing's going to happen. We're going to have a party, and it'll be fun." I even called some of my friends and said, "Hey, do you want to come up here and stay here for the hurricane?" One of my girlfriends, Randi, she said, "No, 'Trice, I think it'll be alright. You know, I'll just stay here." Then she called about an hour later and said, "You know, I think it's really big. I think I'm going to come. I'm going to come." [Laughter.] So she came; and then she invited two of her friends, a couple; and then they brought their daughter, and they all brought their dogs; and in the beginning, we thought we were going to have a whole weekend together and have a good time. Then it turned into ten days.
ROWELL: Did you get some of the storm that far north and west? In Grand Coteau?
MELNICK: It wasn't bad. We got missed. It was very strange actually, because we were preparing for it there too. Then all the squirrels in the trees disappeared the day before. There was stillness. It was very strange. All the squirrels were gone. We never really got a storm. We just got some rain. Now, Hurricane Rita came later from the other direction, and it was weird. We had Katrina from the east and Rita to the west, and we were sort of in between. We got affected by Rita a little bit where we were: we lost our power for a couple days on and off, and lost our water for a little while. But there wasn't any storm damage to speak of—no trees down or anything. But it was weird because we would go [End Page 1417] to the Wal-Mart in Opelousas and there'd be all kinds of things in the parking lot: Red Cross trucks, army trucks, and Humvees. We didn't know why they were there. They could have been going either to New Orleans or to Lake Charles. We were between both devastated cities. Or they were coming from one and going to the other. We were right between the storms. So we were safe.
I'm not technologically savvy but the people at my house were. My friend Randi said, "Oh let me see if I can get a signal out here" (she had wireless Internet) and I said, "This is Grand Coteau. I don't think so." She opened up her computer and goes, "Yup. I got a signal!" [Laughter.] Everyone was surprised. So we looked at Google World or Yahoo World. I have forgotten which one. We could see a photographic map of the city, and we could see the condition of each of our houses in New Orleans. That was a very tense time because we didn't know if we'd lost everything or if our houses were fine and everybody's moods went up and down. For a while they'd think, "Oh, everything's fine." Then they...
