I Almost Lost My Arm After Katrina. But Nothing Could Make Me Leave Home.

Robert Green, 70, who has called the Lower Ninth Ward home since 1967, traces what it has meant to stay after Hurricane Katrina — from surviving toxic floodwaters and years in a FEMA trailer to choosing New Orleans over “safer” cities, watching neighbors and schools disappear even as his grandchildren grow up, graduate from college, and inherit both the land and the responsibility of keeping this place home.

This account has been condensed and edited for clarity.

When people talk about vacant lots down here, I tell them a vacant lot is a family that was here before that’s not here now. Before Hurricane Katrina, we were landlocked — not by water, but because there was no room for improvement. Nobody had 3,000 lots and a bunch of empty space; you might have one vacant lot, maybe two, on the whole block. You could start at one end of the street and, every 40 feet, it was a house, a family, a house, a family, a house, a family. I knew all my neighbors by name, by sight; they knew my children. We’ve lost population, we’ve lost numbers, but we haven’t lost community — that’s the difference.

This has been my home since 1967. If I were to lose it, it would be a big hurt to me. After Katrina, I came back and stayed in a FEMA trailer for three years, just for the desire of bringing normalcy back to my life, my children’s lives, my grandchildren’s lives. If I had moved to Nashville, which wasn’t home, I wouldn’t have had 20 years of happiness here. If I had run to Chicago, I’d have run into blizzards; to Kansas, into tornado alley; to California, into fires. So there’s no running from what could happen. In 20 years, we haven’t had anything like Katrina; we could go another 40, another 100, and never have anything like Katrina.

That doesn’t mean Katrina wasn’t devastating. We wound up in that water, and I actually pricked my hand — didn’t stab it, didn’t cut it, just broke the skin like with a pin. The water was so dirty and contaminated that when we finally left the Superdome and got to Houston, I chose not to stay there and evacuated to Nashville. From the airport I told my brother, “I have to go to the hospital,” straight from the airport to the emergency room to emergency surgery. They wanted to cut off my arm. That gives you an idea of how septic that water was. So when they talk about dredging the canal, I know what contaminated water can do.

Even with all that, I don’t live in the past. If I sit here holding on to what used to be, I’d miss what’s actually in front of me. My mother and granddaughter died, my neighbors are scattered, Leonard School is basically gone because there aren’t enough people to feed it. But my grandchildren who were 2 and 4 during Katrina grew up and graduated from Nicholls State. One just got a master’s from Tulane and is going to medical school. So I can stand here and say we’ve lost a lot, but I can also say we’ve gained things we never would have had if we ran.

Home is important. When I graduated from St. Olaf College with a degree in economics and mathematics, I could have stayed in Minnesota and made more money, but it wasn’t home. After Katrina, if I’d listened to people telling me to leave, I’d have had 20 years of nothing happening somewhere else instead of 20 years of living here. I walk these streets and remember who lived where; I cut the grass on the empty lot next door and think about the family that was there. The property will pass from my hands to my grandchildren — that’s almost natural. You don’t always get to keep the same numbers of people, but you hold on to the place, the legacy, the sense that this is still your neighborhood, even after the water tried to take it away.