Stephen Smith & Bianka Lebeouf Smith

Figure 1.

Stephen Smith
Photo by Dave Herman, © 2006

Figure 2.

Bianca Lebeouf Smith
Photo by Dave Herman, © 2006

ROWELL: To protect yourself from Hurricane Katrina, both of you came here with your daughter to Point Coupe Parish, more than 100 miles northwest of New Orleans. Your wife, Bianka, and young daughter, Annalisa, came Saturday, August 27, and you Stephen, came Sunday, August 28. You left in good time before Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. Unlike a lot of people, you left early—and wisely.

STEPHEN SMITH: Whenever we have a problem with hurricanes, I generally tell my wife to go ahead and take our daughter and leave the city, just because I don't want to have that added burden if something does happen. In storms past, either she was out of town, they were out of town, or I sent them out. And, most times, the storms never hit. I never boarded up the house before. But when this particular hurricane was on its way, I guess I just had a feeling that there was serious danger. We had been out of town in Miami the whole week prior to Katrina. We left Miami right before the hurricane hit Miami. We got back here and started getting back to work. We had been gone for a week, so of course we were behind in our work. I was working all day Saturday, I called Bianka and told her she needed to grab some stuff, take Annalisa, and go to our parents in Oscar, in Pointe Coupee Parish. But I stayed in New Orleans. I knew there was a lot of stuff I needed to do if it was going to be as bad as they predicted. We weren't thinking about the flood water, because you can't do anything about the water. We were just thinking about the wind. So I boarded up all the windows and everything on Sunday morning, and then around 5:00 p.m. I left and came here to Oscar, Louisiana, to my parents' home.

ROWELL: How long did it take you to drive here? There must have been thousands of people on the road.

S. SMITH: It probably took me about three and a half or four hours. The traffic had pretty much died down by the time I had left. I caught some traffic when I got into La Place, Louisiana. But leaving the city was not a problem at all. They had opened up the counter (contra) flow, so traffic was zooming along. Where our house is—or was—I can see the interstate while I was putting up the boards. Around 4:00 p.m., the traffic was stopped in front of the house. I went to cut a board to put up, and when I came back, everything was gone—the traffic was gone just that quickly. So at that point, I decided that it was a good time; I had done what I could. I took the hard drives from the computers and just left. And normally, I don't do any of that. Usually, I am not that concerned about it, but this time I just had a feeling. I did everything I could, and we are fortunate that we still have a lot of things that are irreplaceable. But we did lose most of our stuff.

ROWELL: When you say where your house was, what do you mean?

S. SMITH: We still have our house.

BIANCA LEBEOUF SMITH: Structure—the structure. We still have the structure but that is about it.

S. SMITH: It is completely gutted.

ROWELL: What do you mean by "gutted"? What caused the gutting?

S. SMITH: The water came up to about six feet and sat at about four feet and then sat for three weeks, maybe four weeks, before we could get in. The humidity was sucking the water up into the drywall, so the whole first floor was gone. And then the wind...