AP Photo by John Bazemore Lisa Truong cleans the debris from her nail salon which was completely destroyed by Hurricane Katrina in Pass Christian, Miss., on Monday, Sept. 5, 2005.

Hurricane Survivor Tells Her Story
By Joshua Harford, 09.15.05

When Elizabeth Dooley left for work the evening of Aug. 29, she did not know it would be the last time she saw her humble brick home. She heard a hurricane was looming, but was more concerned about her nursing certification test. The test was less than two weeks away.

While her friends went to a “hurricane party” on the beach, the recently divorced mother took her two children and drove 10 minutes inland from Pass Christian, Mississippi. She had to work the night shift at a nursing home and help evacuate residents.

It had been nearly a year since hurricanes Ivan and Dennis failed to live up to their hype. She thought this would be another routine evacuation. Soon after arriving she realized this time it would be different. There would be no time to evacuate at all.

First it started to rain, and then the wind began to howl. The wind became so powerful that the entire nursing facility began to shake. The sounds of nature merged with the cries of the patients.

“People were praying out loud,” Dooley said, “screaming, asking God for forgiveness.”
The stormy sky began to appear through the shredding roof.

“I felt like I must have done something horrible,” Dooley said. “Society must have done something horrible, and I was a part of it.”

Dooley looks down and admits to being “one of the lucky ones.” Like many other disaster survivors, she lives with immense feelings of guilt.

“Hurricanes are God’s wrath,” Dooley said.

Michelle Palmer, a therapist at the Wendt Center for Loss and Healing in Washington DC, said “survivor’s guilt” is a common feeling when living through a traumatic event. She said on WebMD.com that it results from surviving a disaster when others did not.

Palmer said the most important thing for survivors to do is to tell their stories, despite the pain. She recommends an exercise called “reality testing.” This involves talking through feelings of guilt with someone that can test those feelings against logic and facts.

This is the first time Dooley has talked about her experience. At times, she speaks nearly in a whisper, recounting how some patients in the nursing home did not survive.

She describes the loss of her closest friends and neighbors with a clear, unemotional tone. At other times she is visibly frustrated when describing her own confused emotions.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” she said. “At some point I’m going to grieve.”

The walls of the nursing home never budged in the storm, but the conditions soon deteriorated. With no electricity, food or water, disease and infection quickly spread. However it was dehydration that finally started to take lives, Dooley said.

“The dietary manager didn’t prepare,” Dooley said. “The food was on its way when the storm hit. Of course, we never got it.”

After spending four days in these conditions, Dooley was able to move with her children to another shelter. She hoped the conditions would be better. Her supervisor helped her find gas and siphoned it from abandoned cars. This allowed Dooley and her family to complete the one-hour trip to Wiggins, Mississippi, where she found food and running water.

On Sept. 3, it was finally possible for Dooley to use a cell-phone. She called her father in Illinois. She only had a connection for two minutes, but it was enough to give the address of their makeshift shelter.

When her father arrived, he found Dooley – dirty, exhausted and determined. She had been using her nursing skills to help others, while also caring for her children.

“We left a lot of families behind,” Dooley said. “I feel like I abandoned wonderful people.”

All of Dooley’s material possessions are gone. Her home was destroyed, and all of its contents were scattered beyond recovery. Yet in the midst of her loss, Dooley tells her story – bringing her a step further toward healing.

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