TEXAS \u2014 Twenty years ago, New Orleanians went to cities across Texas for safety. Hurricane Katrina’s impact on the Gulf Coast changed people\u2019s lives forever.<\/p>\n
Sonya Wallace-Banieh embodies what it means to be from New Orleans, Louisiana, with her love of the culture, the Saints and her family.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cNo matter where I live, New Orleans will always be home,\u201d said Wallace.<\/p>\n
But for the last 20 years, Houston, Texas, has become home, her family evacuating before Hurricane Katrina hit their hometown.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe got here, we were waiting to hear from FEMA about the housing they were providing,\u201d Wallace said. \u201cSo, it was about 35 of us all at my sister\u2019s house.\u201d<\/p>\n
They were not alone. In the days before and after the storm, more than 200,000 people came to Houston. The majority were from New Orleans.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were here before it happened,\u201d Wallace said. \u201cBut some of them had gone through the worst of it. They\u2019d been bussed in. Had stayed in the Superdome or had lost family members.\u201d<\/p>\n
Many people didn\u2019t have transportation or the means to evacuate. Across the Gulf Coast, at least 1,300 people died during Hurricane Katrina.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was the storm and then there was the additional aftermath,\u201d Wallace said. \u201cThe aftermath is what caused more damage than anything.\u201d<\/p>\n
With so many displaced, thousands opted to stay in Texas permanently \u2014 like the Favorite family.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had our houses and lives,\u201d said New Orleans native Terryl Favorite Sr. \u201cWe thought we were just leaving for the weekend.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAll you can do is just thank God, that God loved you enough to convict your heart to leave,\u201d said New Orleans native Linda Favorite.<\/p>\n
Linda Favorite also left for Houston before the hurricane hit.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat day my son woke me up in that hotel room though, and I saw that water rising,\u201d Linda said. \u201cWe didn\u2019t scream or nothing, but we cried. Oh, did we boo-hoo. Thats was unbelievable.\u201d<\/p>\n
The home where she and her high school sweetheart raised their family was gone.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo start completely over,\u201d Linda said. \u201cMy furniture, you know everything I owned.\u201d<\/p>\n
An\u00a0armoire is all she has left.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow when we got it, we had mold all down here,\u201d Linda said. \u201cOf course we had to scrub it. My son had to scrub it up for me.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the two decades since Katrina, Linda says the community they\u2019ve built at church makes Houston feel like home.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust the love that they gave me, me and my family,\u201d Linda said. \u201cAnd I saw other people coming in that I know was from New Orleans. And we\u2019re still there because how much they showed forth love towards us.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Although Houston was a new city to them, both Wallace and Linda agree relocating to Texas came with new opportunities for their children.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not saying New Orleans didn\u2019t have those things there,\u201d Linda said. \u201cBut I don\u2019t know if they would have got exposed to it to the point that they would step out into it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWith Houston, even with Texas, the opportunities were bigger and better,\u201d Wallace said.<\/p>\n
Leaving home always comes with challenges, but staying in Texas isn\u2019t something they regret.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s always functions and events, so there\u2019s always something to go back to,\u201d Wallace said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m excited about living in Houston,\u201d Linda said. \u201cI wish I could get a couple of other people to move here.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TEXAS \u2014 Twenty years ago, New Orleanians went to cities across Texas for safety. Hurricane Katrina’s impact on…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":187990,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5130],"tags":[105267,21399,359,1596,31126,4345,9829,50,7202,358,105266,3187,5284],"class_list":{"0":"post-187989","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-houston","8":"tag-amber-hughes","9":"tag-app-human-interest","10":"tag-austin","11":"tag-dallas","12":"tag-el-paso","13":"tag-houston","14":"tag-human-interest","15":"tag-news","16":"tag-san-antonio","17":"tag-texas","18":"tag-texas-weekend","19":"tag-tx","20":"tag-vod"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115119827663842385","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187989","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=187989"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187989\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/187990"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}