Rhonda Sylvester worked in a mayonnaise plant in New Orleans. Though Rhonda and her family remained in New Orleans through the hurricane, they were forced to evacuate their homes by the rising floodwaters. With no car and no effective communication, they wandered for days in search of transportation out of the city. After locating and taking the bus service to the Astrodome, they found that there were no cots left for them, so they left and stayed at a Red Cross–subsidized hotel. They were ultimately helped out of the city not by FEMA, but by the Lazy Brook Baptist church—the only organization other than the Red Cross to provide them with any aid.

Rhonda describes her family’s experience seeking aid after being evacuated from the storm:

VOW: So you were telling me, you had a one-week-old grandbaby.

RS: A one-week-old grandbaby and a fourteen-month-old grandbaby. And we walked across the Mississippi River Bridge. We was told to go across the Mississippi River Bridge and they was gonna pick us up. When we got there, we went under the bridge, and we stayed there about seven hours. People was fightin’, it was all kinds of stuff, with little kids and… it was devastatin’, somethin’ I never experienced in my life. And so they took us on to the interstate, and we slept under the interstate for ten hours, with dogs, all kinds of feces, with people was laying in mud, the dog was laying in mud. And we had a week-old baby with us and a fourteen-month-old baby with us.

VOW: And how many other people were there in your party? Were there other people?

RS: I had my sister with us. She had her three kids. I had my son with me, and my daughter-in-law.

VOW: When did they tell you to evacuate? What day did they tell you to evacuate?

RS: They didn’t tell us when to evacuate. We was at home and we noticed the water just kept risin’ ’cause we didn’t know what was goin’ on because we didn’t have any lights. Before the storm hit, the lights went out. So we didn’t know what was goin’ on. We had decide we was gon’ stay. But the storm had passed and everything seemed like it was alright, but the water kept rising. So as we watched the water rise, we got out before it rise above our head and we walked up on Earhardt.

VOW: So tell me… Sunday, what happened on Sunday when the storm hit?

RS: We was home Sunday, and we made it safe through the storm. You know we had a little water but we didn’t get no water inside, nothing was broke. But what was the problem was the water was risin’, and we watched—that’s what we were afraid of. We didn’t know what was goin’ on, why this water was risin’. And we lived in a housing project, and the water was about a good four feet before we left outta there. And we got the babies out there on a mattress. We float the babies out on the mattress ’cause my niece had her baby too, which her baby had a heat stroke. And they had some people that picked her up, and brought her to Baton Rouge, her and her other two kids and my baby. And so they left and they went to Baton Rouge, and when they got to Baton Rouge they took the baby to the doctor. They say she had a heat stroke ’cause she was only three months. And so we went on with my grandkids…

VOW: Let me just understand what day this is. Sunday, the storm…

RS: It was the day after the storm.

VOW: So on Monday…

RS: That was that Monday. It was that Monday. We traveled like three days before we got here. We slept under bridges, we walked for like a day. We stopped at one place where we slept under the bridge ’cause everybody kept telling us to go here, and go there, the bus was comin’. But they was givin’ us the runaround where the bus was gon’ be. Evidently, they didn’t know where the bus was gonna arrive at. I guess they was comin’ to the decision where the bus was gonna arrive there, so we got across the river. In, I think it’s the Lakeside Shopping Center, the bus pick us up. Harry Lee had ordered some busses but they said it was for his people, but he let us got on so they told us they was gonna take us to a place where we was gonna take a shower, eat and get some rest. They was gonna take us to a hotel. But they took us under a bridge on the interstate, and we stood there like ten hours.

VOW: The bus picked you up at the river…

RS: Yeah, across the street from the shopping mall.

VOW: And they dropped you off…

RS: But they told us, they informed us that they wasn’t takin’ us to the hotel ’til the next day, ’til they could get us to where we were goin’. So when they let us off, they just took us off the bus and we was walkin’. We had to walk through mud ’cause it had been rainin’ and it was like drizzlin’. It was just, it was just sad.

VOW: And did they tell you when they dropped you off, when they would come back to get you?

RS: No. They just told us go wait. We were sleepin’ on the interstate, some people sleepin’ under the bridge. They had dogs out, it was just… It was something I had never experienced in my life.

Evacuation operations under the interstate took a long time to get organized, with only three busses arriving every two to three hours. Rhonda Sylvester’s family were among the last ones to get on a bus.

Rhonda reflects on her initial reaction to the storm:

VOW: Did you think about evacuating before Sunday?

RS: No. I ain’t gon’ lie to you, no. Because I figure, when you done been in New Orleans all your life and you done had as many storms that hit, and when you live in a housing project, I thought we could stand it. And we stand it, we weathered the storm. But it was the water overtook us. It wasn’t the storm, it was the water.

VOW: Why do you think the levee broke?

RS: I don’t know. We didn’t know the levee was broke until after we got to Houston. Now that was the saddest part. And that really touched me when I looked at the news, when we got here. We had a brother that was missin’. We didn’t know if he was alive or dead, but he here too. He here too in Houston. But it was sad, and it touched me. I never experienced nothin’ like that in my life before.

VOW: When you say it’s sad, what are you thinking about?

RS: I think that was the lowest part of my life, and I know before I came here I had some struggles. It wasn’t easy livin’, tryin’ to live. But that was the worst. And I kind of reach out to people. I know how it feel to be homeless now ’cause we felt homeless. We felt like homeless people. We hadn’t had a bath in three days, and hardly eaten anything. It just was sad. And then when we got to the place where we was, they just was throwin’ the food to you like you was dogs.

VOW: Where was that?

RS: That was under the bridge where we was.

VOW: And who was throwing the food?

RS: They was throwin’ it off a truck. The food was on the truck and we was in the crowd, and they just was throwin’ the water and the food off the truck.

VOW: Who was doing it?

RS: I don’t know who they was working for. I didn’t really ask who it was but I know it was done. I don’t know who it was but I know it was done. And it just, I don’t know, it just… You never know how your life gon’ be. One day, you could be alright and the next day you could be down. And that was a hard hit for us, I’m telling you.