Wet with tears, Tina Turnbull’s eyes are fixed on the weather report. Her heart races and hands shake as meteorologists break the news: Hurricane Gustav is headed for New Orleans – on the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.

‘It didn’t really hit me until today,’ Tina said. ‘It was like a panic. It makes it fresh, like it’s happening all over again.’

Now an international student and scholar adviser at Syracuse University, Tina worked at the University of New Orleans before Katrina destroyed her home.

Tina’s house was submerged in nine feet of water after the 17th street canal levee cracked less than a mile away from her home on August 30, 2005. Now, as Gustav bears down on the Gulf Coast, she relives the memories that have traumatized her for three years.

‘I’m worried about my friends,’ Tina said, taking a deep breath. ‘I’ve been trying so hard not to keep track of the hurricanes out of the fear of it happening again. It’s too painful to keep remembering.’

Trying to breathe, Tina let her head drop down and began to cry.

‘I lost things that you can’t replace: family videos where my grandfather was talking about his purple heart, his first date with my grandmother, old photographs,’ Tina said.

Four weeks after the storm, Tina returned to New Orleans to salvage what Katrina left behind.

‘The smell was sickening,’ Tina said. ‘It was the worst smell you could ever imagine – I think of that smell now, and I still get nauseous.’

While Tina’s family survived, watching the storm destroy her life left her emotionally scared.

A survey conducted by the University of New Orleans, University of Southern Mississippi, Stanford University and Arizona State University found that more than 50 percent of Katrina victims and survivors developed Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Tina believes she may be part of that 50 percent.

‘It’s unbearable,’ Tina said. ‘I had to go talk to someone today because I couldn’t stand it anymore.’

Tina watched Hurricane Katrina ravage the Gulf Coast from her family’s house in Florida in 2005. Her husband stayed behind to watch over their restaurant. The international students Tina worked with at the University of New Orleans scattered during evacuations.

Out of contact with her family for nearly a week, Tina learned from the news that her neighborhood was devastated.

‘A few days after it hit, they showed a coffee place on Harrison Street that had only four inches of the roof showing above water,’ Tina said. ‘The coffee shop was five blocks from my house. That’s how I found out.’

Tina’s house was not recoverable, and the University of New Orleans closed down for a semester – she was left homeless and unemployed.

After living with her husband’s parents and bouncing between jobs for over a year, Tina decided to make a clean start and came to Syracuse.

‘(New Orleans) people are still feeling it,’ Tina said. ‘But because it didn’t happen up here, in their back yard, it’s easy to forget, to brush aside.’

She watched Katrina, as she watches Gustav now, hundreds of miles away and helpless. Relying solely on the media to tell her what was going on in New Orleans, then seeing the destruction first-hand, she found that what happened and what was covered differed greatly.

‘You can’t understand what it was like by watching the news,’ she said. ‘I’d rather be in 300 feet of snow than go through another hurricane.’

Now, three years later, Tina fears that Gustav will discourage residents from rebuilding if their homes are destroyed, and that another bad storm could keep other Americans from supporting the reconstruction efforts.

‘There will be a greater call not to rebuild if Gustav does what Katrina did,’ she said, crying at her desk.

As she hopes for the safety of her friends in ‘The Big Easy,’ she only has one piece of advice to her loved ones: ‘Leave now; don’t wait. Don’t expect help – it’s not coming.’

For her, Gustav is more than a storm – it’s a reminder of all that went wrong, and all that could so easily go awry again.

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Published on September 1, 2008 at 12:00 pm