Emma appears to have moved on.
I hope she’s happy and healthy.
Word came from City Hall earlier this week that my search for a woman I met 10 years ago here in Amarillo after Hurricane Katrina devastated her home town of New Orleans has come up empty.
She and more than 100 other refugees from the devastation of the storm fled to the High Plains. Several communities welcomed them. They lived for a time in makeshift quarters assembled at the Amarillo Civic Center, which had been turned into a refugee center.
The Amarillo Public Health Department and the city’s Emergency Services Department had mobilized quite efficiently to accept the individuals — and the families — that sought to escape the devastation brought to the Gulf Coast in August 2005.
They set up health clinics, providing medicine and immunization. Counselors were available to talk to the refugees who were coping with the enormous emotional shock of what they were enduring.
From my recollection of the events as they were unfolding, the city response represented one of its finer moments.
None of those storm refugees remained.
The city reportedly had 48 clients registered through it Community Development office, but all of them, according to the city, appear to be “inactive.”
Perhaps it was her heart that was talking when Emma agreed to meet with me shortly upon arriving in Amarillo. She said she had intended to stay here. She was going to give up her life in the Big Easy and settle, perhaps, for a quieter existence way up yonder here on the Caprock.
She had plenty to say a decade ago about the incompetence of the emergency response in New Orleans. She blamed everyone — local, state and federal authorities — for the confusion and mayhem that ensued as residents struggled to cope with the loss of homes, not to mention the loss of loved ones.
Emma was fortunate in one important aspect: No one in her family died from the storm.
My hope was to find her and to visit with her yet again, to assess how she’s coped.
I’ll put my faith in the belief that she’s doing fine and that the city she called home, if only for a brief time — Amarillo — helped Emma find her way to a new life.
