Prayers were answered for the Foster family yesterday morning when the family made good its escape from flood-ravaged New Orleans.
‘It’s just been a nightmare,’ said Cayman businessman Bunny Foster.
Mr. Fosters, wife, Mary was in Chalmette, which is south of New Orleans in St. Bernard Parish, with the couple’s daughter, Cindy Gureino.
As Hurricane Katrina was churning in the Gulf of Mexico, Cindy went into labour.
Her daughter was born at 4.20am Saturday at Baptist Hospital in New Orleans.
As Katrina built strength over the weekend she became a major threat to New Orleans.
At 6am Monday, Grand Isle, Louisiana, became Katrina’s first target and hell on earth began.
As the storm marched across Louisiana and into the Mississippi Gulf Coast, the Baptist Hospital was bearing the brunt of some of Katrina’s worst. New mom and baby had to be transferred to the third floor of the hospital to escape rising water.
‘Mary got bruised up,’ Mr. Foster said. ‘They all had a rash.’
He believes insulation falling out of the ceiling of the hospital was causing the skin problems.
Mary and Cindy languished in the deteriorating conditions of the hospital until Tuesday morning when Cindy, five other newborns and their mothers were taken to Ochsners, a private hospital in New Orleans.
From there, they were taken by ambulance to Baton Rouge.
‘Cindy got with the rest of the family there,’ he said.
As Cindy was making her way to Baton Rouge, Mary, Matthew and Jerry had to get creative.
They were taken by airboat to the corner of Napoleon and St. Charles streets down in the French Quarter of New Orleans.
There, Jerry befriended a guy from the Federal Emergency Management Agency who was doling out water. He helped to get them to the convention centre.
But they weren’t allowed in; gun toting rival gangs had taken over the centre and it was a danger to innocent people trying to find shelter.
They found a way to get across the Mississippi River to the West Bank of New Orleans where they were dropped of at Jefferson Memorial Hospital along with five or six nurses from Baptist Hospital.
‘They got all them over there. How they got there, I don’t know,’ Mr. Foster said.
From Jefferson Hospital the crew made it to Baton Rouge.
Mr. Foster is sending a plane to Baton Rouge to pick up his family this morning. From there they will go to St. Petersburg, Florida. Mr. Foster will more than likely be there when they arrive.
‘I’ve just got to get them there and get them settled down,’ he said. ‘They’re just going to have to live there for a while. But everybody’s OK.’
As Mary Foster makes her way from the rain swollen city of New Orleans and weather beaten city of Baton Rouge, she is faced with a bittersweet joy.
She can rejoice in the fact that she’s got a precious new granddaughter and that her immediate family will be safe, for now, in Florida.
But she hasn’t heard a word about her sisters or nephew left behind in Chalmette.
‘She’s afraid they’re gone,’ Mr. Foster said.
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