Teacher's family flees Katrina's fierce winds

Published 12:03 pm Thursday, December 11, 2008

By Dennis Box

The Courier-Herald

Hurricane Katrina's fierce winds and flooding may not have physically reached into Bonny Lake, but it did emotionally.

Mark Dawson, the Emerald Hills Elementary School music teacher, was born, raised and graduated from college in New Orleans. His immediate family lives in the city, and when the call came to evacuate, the fear and concern stretched to Bonney Lake.

"My family left at 3 a.m. Sunday," Dawson said. "They heard the mayor was issuing a mandatory evacuation. They knew it would be worse than usual, but no one thought it would be anything like it is."

When the hurricane slammed into the city with winds around 145 mph and a 28-foot storm surge that busted the levees holding water back from Lake Pontchartrain and Lake Maureras, the city Dawson had left fell into a wash of water and chaos.

Dawson saw the elementary school he attended underwater on television, and he could not contact his family. He knew his 53-year-old mother, 92-year-old grandmother, two sisters and a brother, their families, an aunt and other family members had left, but for nearly two days there was no word.

"The cell phones failed," Dawson said. "I got most of my information from the news."

Finally the only communication that would work for Dawson was text messaging, and he was able to contact a family friend and the day after the storm hit he talked to his mother.

"They were in Houston," Dawson said. "They were all in one hotel room, about nine or 10 people and a poodle. My mom saw our house on TV underwater."

The only family member unable to evacuate was Dawson's niece, Donna Dawson, an Orleans Parish Sheriff's Deputy.

"They didn't evacuate the jail, so she had to stay," Dawson said.

Dawson heard stories on broadcast news of prisoners being taken out of jail and breaking away, but he was able to text message her the morning of Aug. 31 and found the stories were false and his niece was OK.

By Friday his niece was on her way out of the city and his family had found a second room.

"I'm hoping my niece is on one of the buses," Dawson said. "My mother was able to laugh a little today. She told me she had just gotten her roof repaired. I know she's worried about her house and her job. At some point the bills are going to start coming."

Dawson said people from Emerald Hills Elementary have offered to donate clothing and the children from a school in Texas where he taught before coming to Bonney Lake have collected money for his family.

"People have been very kind," the 33-year-old Dawson said. "It's awful to see this happen to this city I loved. I spent most of my life there and it's gone."

Dennis Box can be reached at dbox@cmg-northwest2.go-vip.net/courierherald.