When Michael Leyden and Jean Whitfield flew from Ireland to New Orleans for their honeymoon in August 2005, they never could have imagined how unforgettable the trip would be.
Now living in Michael’s native Dromahair, Co Leitrim, with their three sons, the couple have just marked 20 years of marriage.
Amid the celebrations, another anniversary weighs heavily on their minds – Hurricane Katrina, a disaster that coincided with their trip and is now seared in their memories forever.
Katrina wrought devastation along the US Gulf Coast, claiming at least 986 lives in Louisiana alone and displacing more than a million people in the region.
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During the storm surge on August 29th, several levees in New Orleans failed and within 24 hours, 80 per cent of the city had flooded.
Finding themselves trapped in the aftermath,the couple initially took shelter for days in their hotel, living off rations as the floodwaters rose.
When they eventually left Hotel Monteleone in the city’s French quarter, the newly-weds quickly discovered the streets had descended into anarchy.
“You could see people with trolley loads of Foot Locker gear. You could hear gunshots going off in the background. It was chaos,” Jean says.
Remembering the days leading up to the surge, Michael says there was no real sense of panic. Then on Sunday 28th, reality started to creep in as hotel employees were kept overnight, bringing their pets with them.
[ New Orleans marks Hurricane Katrina anniversaryOpens in new window ]
“The streets were abandoned, people were boarding up to protect their buildings. It was pretty much empty,” Jean says, recalling the calm before the storm.
The couple tried to sleep as the wind picked up outside, “howling”. “You could hear all the debris hitting against the side of the building. I was terrified.”
By Wednesday, the hotel staff had started encouraging tourists to leave and go to the Superdome or Convention Centre where thousands were sheltering.
During breakfast, consisting of “one rasher and some grits”, the couple befriended some other Irish guests, including Carlow woman Marie Lyons, and Kathy McNelis, whose parents were both Irish. Together with Kathy’s husband and Marie’s friend, the six “were inseparable after that”.
They joined a 50-strong group of tourists in a mission to evacuate, trudging through the streets with suitcases in tow after buses due to take them out of the city failed to come.
“It was a bit unnerving because we stuck out like a sore thumb,” says Jean.
En route to the Convention Centre, a police officer advised the group that it was too dangerous. They later learned of the violent scenes that had unfolded there when fights broke out amid squalid conditions.
[ Hurricane Katrina: 'We've been very lucky. We could have been wiped out'Opens in new window ]
Sleeping outside a Canal Street casino for two nights, Jean remembers tucking her passport inside her pocket so she could be identified, thinking “if anything happens to me at least my family will have closure”.
Eventually the six friends were offered a lift out of the mayhem by an English reporter who drove the group to Baton Rouge airport on the Friday. From there, they managed to get flights to New York, which was “like a different world”.
New Yorkers “were almost oblivious to what was going on” in the storm-hit areas, Michael notes, after living “in survival mode” for almost a week.
Although far from the idyllic honeymoon they had imagined, Michael and Jean say some unexpected positives came from the experience.
“It definitely brought us closer together and we made lifelong friends out of it,” Michael says. Their group have stayed in regular contact.
[ Hurricane Katrina: 'Dead bodies everywhere ... it is a mess'Opens in new window ]
The kindness of the hotel staff has stuck with them too; many found their homes underwater but still returned to look after guests.
The couple have been back in the States since, to visit Boston and New York, where Marie lives with her family, but have not ventured back to New Orleans.
“We have thought about the idea but I still have nightmares about being back in New Orleans and then a hurricane hits,” says Jean.
“I certainly look at disaster movies a little bit differently. I’m a bit more wary of the weather.”
Sister Vera Butler (80), from Portmagee, Co Kerry, was living in New Orleans when the storm hit.
Having joined the Presentation Sisters in Clonmel in 1963, she moved to Colorado in 1970 and, 20 years later, was living in New Orleans.
Having evacuated before the worst of the hurricane, she returned in mid-September to find “a dead city” devastated by flooding.
Alongside four other members of the Presentation Sisters, Sr Vera worked to help people left destitute and homeless in Katrina’s wake. On a phone call from San Antonio, Texas where she lives today, she remembers the aftermath.
“People had said not to return to the city, that there were wild animals roaming around and it was dangerous.”
One morning in mid-September, she “got tired of waiting”, and drove from Daphne, Alabama to New Orleans.
“We saw no traffic which was most unusual and there wasn’t a bird to be heard. It was like a dead city.”
Reaching the house where she rented, Sr Vera found a boat tied to the window. “We couldn’t open the front door and the back door was wide open,” she remembers.
“My room was downstairs and I lost everything ... The [floor] boards were all warped and the watermark was halfway up the front door. There was nothing we could save.”
[ Enforcing law and order after Hurricane KatrinaOpens in new window ]
In October, she returned to live in New Orleans – a city remarkably changed by the disaster.
“There was this browny grey dirt everywhere. You couldn’t imagine the damage. I couldn’t recognise the area. I remember by November there were still piles of debris.”
In the months that followed, Sr Vera worked to support the city’s most vulnerable, providing food for the homeless who had by then started to return.
The Catholic Extension Society presented Sr Vera with the Lumen Christi award in September 2006 for her missionary work.
With the money from the award she was able to establish Lantern Light, a non-profit in New Orleans. In partnership with other religious organisations in the city’s Tulane neighbourhood, the Rebuild Center was opened in August 2007 where those impacted by the hurricane could, two years later, still find food and resources.
