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A Mississippi Highway Patrol car makes its way through northbound traffic on Interstate 55 on Sunday. AP Photo by Therese Apel/The Daily Leader

As Houmas Flee, Hardship Follows

By Victor Merina

A mass exodus of evacuees jammed roads and highways along the Gulf Coast states on Sunday as residents in the path of Hurricane Gustav sought safety from the storm barreling toward land with dangerous winds and the threat of surging floodwaters.

For one caravan of two dozen United Houma Nation families from Louisiana, the forced trek meant a day-long drive across state lines to a gymnasium where the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians had offered to house Houma tribal members.

For another group of 20 Houmas, it meant driving for hours in snarled traffic only to be turned away from a church in Natchez, Miss., and then driving fruitlessly from one place to another before finally spending the night in a Wal-Mart parking lot.

"We thought we were going to a Red Cross shelter," Vonda Trahan, who lives in Houma, La., said by telephone of the famly odyssey. "But there was nothing available, nothing at all."

Trahan, along with her two children — ages 3 and 7 — and her parents in their 60s, spent Saturday night sleeping in the family van at the Wal-Mart parking lot in Vidalia, La., battling mosquitoes and a sense of unease in the humid night.

"I wouldn't have put my children through all that if I had known this would happen. No way," Trahan said. "My baby was crying all night, ‘I want to go home. I want to go home.'"

Unfortunately for the Trahan family and thousands of others, going home may not be an alternative for a while with their communities now in the projected path of Gustav. The Category 3 hurricane with sustained winds of 115 mph is expected to strike land Monday morning with a storm surge of 10 to 14 feet, the National Hurricane Center said.

Even for those on the move, meanwhile, there appears to be a calm before the troubling storm.

"Right now we are on kind of remote control," said Seth Siegel in a telephone interview as he drove the road from Houma to Philadelphia, Miss. Siegel was helping lead another group of Houma tribal members from the bayou country to safer ground and described the group as calm despite an underlying tension from the ordeal.

"We're just listening to the radio, and everyone just hopes that we can go back in a few days," he said.

Siegel works on a project, financed by the Blue Moon Fund, which is aimed at helping the Houma Nation — the state's largest tribe with 36,000 members — recover from the devastation left by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita three years ago. The program provides training and other support to help communities such as the Houma become more resilient to disaster. That may be severely tested with the onslaught of Hurricane Gustav, although Siegel said he has come to believe in tribal members.

"The Houma have a strong sense of community," said Siegel, "and that helps them a lot."

That sense of community could be found early Sunday morning when about 20 Houma members — some from the coastal communities of Isle de Jean Charles and Pointe Au Chien — met Siegel in the parking lot of a supermarket in the town of Houma. With their five vehicles packed with water, food and other belongings, the group made its way toward their destination 150 miles away.

But Louise Billiot, a vocational rehabilitation counselor for the tribe who led the group, said the traffic flowed at times but drivers often inched along at 25 to 30 mph on Interstate 55 or were at a near standstill in the congestion. They also encountered long waits at gas stations and restroom stops during the journey.

Their destination was a gymnasium in Philadelphia that the Mississippi Choctaw had offered to help house some of the Houma. And when they arrive — more than 12 hours later — Billiot said it will be with a sense of gratitude toward their neighboring tribe, the Choctaw.

"What is really neat is the hand of hospitality stretching out on this trip," she said. "It's a wonderful example of Indian people helping other Indian people in a time of need."

Merina reported from Los Angeles.

Victor Merina is reznet's senior correspondent and special projects editor. A former Los Angeles Times investigative reporter and finalist for the Pulitizer Prize, he also is a senior fellow at the USC Annenberg Institute for Justice and Journalism. Merina is a visiting faculty member at The Poynter Institute, where he leads seminars on cross-cultural reporting and writing about race.