Yolanda Page says she can’t forget the image of a dying woman outside the Superdome shortly after New Orleans flooded a year ago. After evacuating to Houston, Page returned to the Iberville public housing project even though she yearns to live elsewhere.
A grandmother and her 4-year-old granddaughter can do nothing but watch as a fellow Hurricane Katrina evacuee dies awaiting rescue. A National Guard soldier cradles a baby as she carries it to safety through floodwaters in the streets of New Orleans. A couple clings to a tree for hours, braving swirling floodwaters, snakes and alligators before being rescued and taken by helicopter to the New Orleans Arena. They were moments of misery — and miracle — in the greatest natural disaster Louisiana has ever known. But the mark those moments left on the storm victims is enduring. Their experiences were captured in photographs during the chaos that followed the hurricane. As south Louisianians reflect on the year that has passed since Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast, The Advocate tracked down five of those whose lives were changed in an instant. What follows are their stories.
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