Renee Martin spent the majority of her life in New Orleans, before moving to Aubrey, Louisiana as a young adult. She was visiting her sister in New Orleans when the hurricane struck. She survived alone for days in the midst of the storm with no food or water, wading through the wreckage of New Orleans only to encounter the dire circumstances of the Louisiana Superdome and the relocation process. She now lives with her family in Houston, Texas.

VOW: When did you start seeing the dead things?

RM: When we start getting close to the city part, going to the Dome.

VOW: And when you were seeing those things, I can’t imagine, how did it feel?

RM: Creepy. Scary. Like the end of the world. I was scared. I was alone. I was frightened.

VOW: And then you had to walk in it.

RM: Yeah.

VOW: Did you think you were going to make it?

RM: No.

VOW: You didn’t. Were you afraid that it was going to get too high?

RM: I was afraid that there was gonna have alligators and snakes in the water. And I thought they might bite me and eat me before I make it.

VOW: That’s scary. I heard that there were fish floating around. Did you see fish?

RM: They had fish. I seen dead fish floating around. It had started to began getting the smell in the water. They had leaking gas in the water from the cars. The cars was underwater, so they had… the water was very nasty.

VOW: So you got to the Superdome and then what happened?

RM: I was there among the crowd of people there was there. And it was crazy because it was a lot of crime and yelling help and people dying. We were dehydrated. They had no changing clothes, I had to stay wet. And I had to wind up sleeping with those clothes on and drying in those same clothes. We didn’t have water to drink. We couldn’t use the bathroom. We didn’t have no food. And I started dehydrating real bad. And it went on for three days, four days at the most till when we did get food, we got those MREs, the military-ready food. It was good, but I couldn’t hold it down because I had been without food for so long. So, I got pretty sick.

VOW: So, you were vomiting?

RM: Yeah, a lot.

VOW: Where did you vomit? Where could you vomit?

RM: Right there, on the ramp at the Superdome. There was a lot of us, just throwing up, just throwing up. And I was getting weaker and weaker.

VOW: And were you by yourself this entire time?

RM: Yes.

VOW: You were. All alone?

RM: I was looking for someone that I know, my family, my kids, but I didn’t see nobody.

VOW: So did you walk around looking for people?

RM: Yeah. I couldn’t walk too much because it was so packed full of people. And it was pushing and shoving and everybody was panicking and I didn’t want to go too far because I didn’t wanna miss a ride if a ride came.

VOW: So when you first walked into that Superdome, that would be Tuesday. You walk in there and what did you see?

RM: Children crying, people screaming. The violence was going on with the fighting and people dying. People were sick from dehydration. Nothing to eat, no food. Children saying they hungry and they want something to eat, which we all were. People laying around, dead. It was awful.

VOW: How’d you find your place on that ramp? How’d you make your way toward it?

RM: I saw a bunch of people and I wanted to get where the people was and then I wanna be by myself.

VOW: So was there a group that you were a part of?

RM: I was by myself, I just made myself involved with everybody.

VOW: You did. And did they take you in?

RM: Yeah.

VOW: They did. I would think that that…

RM: Yeah. We were all trying to stay together. We didn’t know each other, but we know we needed to be together. Because we was all suffering and going through the same thing.

VOW: So that Tuesday night, did you get any sleep?

RM: No.

VOW: You still had those wet clothes on?

RM: Yeah. I didn’t sleep really. I didn’t sleep at all much, even when they rescued us and brought us to the Astrodome, I still couldn’t sleep. I really actually got my first night of good sleep when I had gotten my own apartment.

VOW: So a long time.

RM: Yeah.

VOW: When did you finally get your clothes?

RM: When we were at the Astrodome, the second day we… Well the first day they was issuing out changing clothes to everyone but it was so many people reaching for clothes, like at a Mardi Gras Parade. It was kinda hard. So I didn’t get anything until that next day. I had got some changing clothes which were too big but at least they was clean and I was able to take a good shower and wash my hair. But it was awful. We had to… it was like thirty people in one shower room with thirty showers at one time and we had to deal with that. We just get ourself cleaned up.

VOW: So you go from the Superdome to the Astrodome?

RM: Mm-hmm.

VOW: Then that Tuesday night, it was your first night in the Superdome. Were things any different on Wednesday?

RM: Wednesday, about the same. We waited around for someone to rescue us. No one. All you see is people steady coming to the Dome. You know, to seek some dry land and getting almost everybody else not be alone. When we were rescued, which was Friday, we were taken to I-10 and Metairie, which they had three hundred school bus took a lot of people, and five hundred charter bus came the next day and I was in the group that caught the charter bus the next day.

VOW: So you spent that night…

RM: Yeah, we had to spend the night on the road.

VOW: So tell me about that.

RM: It was awful. They fed us out there. We had something to eat but we didn’t have no bathrooms out there. None. So we really had to just hold it and we kept on asking the people when is somebody to come get us, they said they coming as soon as they can and the three hundred school bus took all the people they can and they brought them to places like Baton Rouge and Lafayette and other places. And no more bus was coming through, so we stayed there and said, “When are they come and get us? When are they coming?” And come to find out they had five hundred charters parked about a mile away, waiting for them to have a order to come in and pick us up, which was the next day.

VOW: So as far you know, they had the means, but they didn’t have the permission?

RM: Yes. So we had to sleep out there on that hard ground. It was the highway we slept on. No blankets, no mattress, no pillows. Nothing.

VOW: So how were people surviving?

RM: We were tired so it didn’t matter, we just wanted to get some rest. We were tired. We wanted a meal and we wanted to rest.