Mother, daughter reunited after New Orleans evacuation
Published: September 10, 2005
It’s still a long road to recovery, but a New Orleans woman and her mother will travel it together.
Madelyn Hannan and her mother, Frances Hannan, of New Orleans had been separated for several days following Hurricane Katrina. They were reunited Thursday, thanks, in part, to help from some from Caddo Valley residents.
The women had decided not to evacuate their Lake View community home before the hurricane made landfall on Aug. 29. The Hannan family had ridden out several storms in the past, including Ivan, Camille and Betsy. “We had a false sense of security,” Madelyn Hannan said. “Everyone was quite upset. They didn’t want to leave.”
Looking back now she wishes they had evacuated. Their house was only seven blocks from the location of the levee breech. “Fifteen feet of water flooded our house within 15 minutes,” she said.
Hannan’s husband, a New Orleans optometrist, was not home at the time. She and her mother rushed to the attic, their only tools an ax and a Japanese tree saw. Hannan immediately began trying to chop through the roof of the house to escape the rising water, but because the wood was so dry she was unsuccessful. “It was like a rock,” she said.
She worked her way over to a vent where she was able to chop a hole in the roof and use the ax handle to pry the vent away. She used the tree saw to cut a larger hole in the roof.
Hannan sat on the roof of the house calling for help. She said others throughout the neighborhood were doing the same, calling out their street addresses in the hope that someone would hear them and pass the information on to rescuers.
On Tuesday morning, help finally arrived. Two private citizens in kayaks were able to retrieve the Hannan’s sail boat which was floating on the water. The boat was still on its trailer.
After cutting the straps that secured the boat to the trailer, the men guided it back to the house and Hannan and her mother climbed into it. The women stayed in the sail boat for a short while until they were able to get into a larger boat with other evacuees.
For two hours, the group paddled the one mile to the 17th Street Canal where they beached the boat on the Interstate 10 on ramp.
“All of the officials were just out there sightseeing,” Hannan said. “There were four boats out there with officials who would not even tow us in. The people doing the rescues were civilians.”
The women were loaded on a bus and taken to Bonnabel High School in Kenner, La. On Friday, Hannan’s mother was taken by ambulance to the New Orleans airport to get a flight out. When they arrived at the airport, there was a four hour wait to get in the door. Frances Hannan slept on the concrete outside the door.
Frances Hannan was finally able to board a plane which she thought was going to San Antonio, Texas. “But by the grace of God we went to Fort Chaffee, Ark.,” she said. She called Arkansas “God’s own private domain.”
Hannan was processed at Fort Chaffee and stayed there for about three days before being moved to Spring Lake camp near Hot Springs.
“There were these beautiful people out front waiting on the bus (in Hot Springs),” Frances Hannan said. “The most beautiful people in the world.”
At the camp, volunteers began processing the evacuees. One of the volunteers, Nichole Jones, said she asked Hannan if she had a phone number where her daughter could be reached. Hannan had her daughter’s cell phone number, written on a piece of paper, in her purse.
Most calls placed to cell phones from the region affected by Hurricane Katrina have not gone through due to downed phone systems, but Jones placed a call to Madelyn Hannan. She did not get an answer.
Madelyn Hannan later noticed the missed call on her phone. She said she had been hoping to receive a call from an unfamiliar number because she knew it would be her mother. She attempted to return the call, but Jones did not reach her phone in time.
Jones called Hannan back. “I tried to call her back again, and I was saying ‘please go through, please go through.’”
Hannan answered that call.
“I couldn’t believe it went through,” Jones said. “It was a miracle.”
Hannan, who had left the shelter in Kenner with the help of Living Word Church in Homer, La., finally knew where her mother was. On Thursday morning, she came to Arkansas.
Hannan knew she was heading to Hot Springs, but she was unsure of the exact route that would get her there. While traveling east on Interstate 30, she noticed the Hot Springs exit sign at Caddo Valley and took it. She then noticed something even better - a Caddo Valley Police car.
Officer Woody Perry was leaving the Exxon station, and Hannan knew she had to stop him. “I saw his back-up lights come on, so I drove in there and blocked him in. Then I started honking the horn to get his attention,” she said.
She had definitely gotten Perry’s attention. “I thought maybe I had given her son a ticket or something. I thought I had a mad mother on my hands,” he said.
Hannan explained to Perry that she was trying to locate Spring Lake Camp. He knew exactly what she was talking about, because he has been working as a security officer at the camp.
Perry made a few phone calls, and by noon Hannan and her mother were reunited at Caddo Valley City Hall.
Alan Dillavou, Caddo Valley’s mayor, said Madelyn Hannan waited at city hall until three volunteers from the camp brought her mother to join her. “She enjoyed telling her story, and we enjoyed listening to her,” he said. “We had a good time here.”
Dillavou said the volunteers from the camp “were really nice people. They love what they’re doing, and they’ll be doing it for a long time.”
When Frances Hannan arrived at city hall, she and her daughter had a happy reunion. “It was great watching them get together,” Dillavou said.
By early afternoon, the women left Caddo Valley en route to Jefferson, Texas, where Hannan’s husband is staying with a cousin. He had stayed in the New Orleans Superdome and at a Dallas shelter before going to the cousin’s home.
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