Us > Some refugees say they won't return to New Orleans

Hill, 23, lost his home in the floods that followed Hurricane Katrina, and with reconstruction expected to take months, many said they were permanently leaving a city that was their family home for generations.

A worker in a New Orleans coffee plant, Hill wants to go back to school and find a job as an electrician in either Atlanta or Houston.

Jeffery Joseph, a 49-year-old truck driver, echoed Hill's comments. "What am I going back to? My house is gone. I lost everything," he said. "I'm planning on staying here."

Joseph said his family had lived in Louisiana since his great grandparents moved to the United States from Haiti. His temporary home is the Houston Astrodome, an enclosed stadium where 15,000 are living on temporary cots in an area that once hosted baseball and football games.

In some cases, the question of where to live divided families. Darlene Wheeler, 43, rephrased a jazz song made famous by Louis Armstrong "Do You Know What it Means to Miss New Orleans."

"It's very sad to leave New Orleans," she said. "I'm going back."

Her mother Ruby, 56, said after 17 people died in a cousin's house during the flood, she will live elsewhere.

"I'll go visit. I won't go back to live," she said as she searched for her husband, who she had not seen since her evacuation. "There's nothing to go back to, everything down there is on the water."

Couples also debated their plans for the future. Lesley Johnson, 21, who worked in a fast food restaurant, said she would relocate to Beaumont, Texas, near the Louisiana border. Keith Oates, with whom she has a daughter, said he was not sure what to do.

Both shared a suspicion however that authorities had focused on saving expensive white homes and neglected predominantly black neighborhoods.

"This is the cause why there are all these black folks here," Oates said at the Astrodome, where the refugees were overwhelmingly black. "They flooded us out for one reason only, to save the white folks."

After Hurricane Katrina's powerful winds and rain swamped most of the city on Monday, some of the city's levees broke on Tuesday, leaving most of the city underwater. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said it could take up to 80 days to remove the water.

Officials said they were housing 15,000 refugees at the Astrodome and nearly 4,000 at other sites in Houston. Thousands of more prosperous refugees stayed at area hotels, straining resources as harried clerks attempted to provide cribs and other supplies.

At the Astrodome, Lillie Mae Harris wept as she recalled the ordeal of recent days and separation from family members, but vowed to return.

"I'll go back to New Orleans, my church is there, everything," she said.

2005-09-04