RALEIGH -- Even after Hurricane Katrina destroyed her family's New Orleans home five years ago, even after they resettled in Raleigh and her children started new lives in new schools, Amy Nguyen longed to return to Louisiana.
New Orleans has a large and vibrant Vietnamese population. Nguyen missed her old neighborhood, her friends and her church.
True, the New Orleans of 2005 was not the city of her childhood. After the hurricane, schools and hospitals were closed. The floods ravaged basic services.
When the family trekked to Louisiana to clean their mildew- and silt-laden home, they and their neighbors depended on American Red Cross mobile kitchens to provide meals. There was no electricity or running water.
Still, it took Nguyen two years of living in Raleigh before she decided the family's immediate future lies in North Carolina.
"For right now," she said of the bayou city where she lived for more than three decades, "I don't see any future back there."
Hundreds of thousands of Gulf Coast residents fled in advance of Hurricane Katrina's arrival five years ago today, or in the days and weeks that followed. Many went to nearby cities, such as Houston, Dallas and Atlanta, and more than 1,000 found their way to the Triangle, according to claim records kept by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
There are no records on exactly how many families decided to make this their permanent home.
Nguyen, 46, and her husband, Bao, and their two children made the long drive to Raleigh to stay with her sister, Ashley Nguyen, and her family. In the immediate wake of the storm, Ashley welcomed about 30 rain-soaked relatives into her home.
Bao, whose English skills are not quite up to those of his wife, smiled when asked about that living arrangement.
"Terrible," he said, laughing. "Messy."
The evacuees included Amy's father, who refused to leave his Louisiana home. Only after the family's priest told the military of his whereabouts was he plucked from the house, transferred to the Superdome and eventually ferried by relatives to North Carolina.
Of those who sought temporary shelter in Raleigh,only Amy and her immediate family put down roots here. The rest are back in the Gulf Coast.
Returning to ruin
After they evacuated but before the floods hit, looters took everything of value from the family's home. When they returned after the flood, everything that remained was ruined.
But the sale of that house, along with insurance andFEMA money, allowed the Nguyens to buy a home in North Raleigh. They moved in after a transitional period in an apartment, which was arranged with the help of St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Church, assistance for which the family continues to be grateful.
Amy works as a document clerk for the Smith Debnam law firm. Bao, who suffered a severe back injury in the Louisiana shipyards where he used to work, receives disability payments.
Immediately after the storm, Amy hoped the schools and the hospitals could reopen quickly.
It was only after she realized they would not that she decided to stay in North Carolina. The couple's daughter, Thuy, is now 10, and their son, Quang, is 21.
Wake County schools are much better than what is available back home, Amy said.
"A lot of schools are still closed," she said, and there are not as many doctors as there used to be. Even the shopping hasn't completely returned. Amy believes it will be another 10 years before she could consider moving back.
The rest of her family moved back, but they had their reasons. Some siblings' children were older, so school wasn't as much of a concern. One sister owns a small grocery store that she wanted to get back to.
Each of them, though, is happy at least one sister decided to leave years ago, giving them someplace to go after the storm.
"Before I moved to North Carolina, everybody told me not to," Ashley said, laughing. "I always kid them, if I hadn't been here, you guys wouldn't have had a place to stay."
For Amy Nguyen, that place to stay has turned into a place to live.
