When Hurricane Katrina overwhelmed New Orleans and the surrounding region five years ago, hundreds of thousands of lives were changed forever, in a myriad of ways. Hundreds died, but even among survivors, many lost all that was familiar. And recovery is a process that still goes on day by day.
Here are three stories of survival and readjustment, by AP writers who tracked down individuals they had first met in Katrina's chaotic wake.
The Thomas family
Five years ago, the family had never seen a cactus up close. Mexican food meant Taco Bell. And the phrase "dry heat" would have been absurd.
Now cactus plants abound, and Mom knows how to make the traditional Mexican dish menudo. And that dry heat helped salvage the Disney movies retrieved from a flooded-out house in New Orleans.
They arrived in Arizona a week after Hurricane Katrina struck, one family among the thousands of storm evacuees flung across the country in search of sanctuary. Thomas was 36 years old, with six children and her longtime boyfriend, Doyle Smith, by her side, and her mind revving with questions.
Five years later, the family's story has new chapters -- marked by more loss but also many achievements, by tough times but also the generosity of strangers.
They survived Katrina by taking refuge in the attic of their four-bedroom brick house: Thomas, Smith and all six children, huddled together: Kayleigh, 15; Kourtney, 13; Larry, 12; Annalyce, 6; Andrew, 5; and 3-year-old Angela.
They eventually made their way to an evacuation staging area and boarded a government plane to Arizona.
Thomas still has bad days, when she misses her house (which was foreclosed upon) and the food and, even, the "stuff" she once didn't think mattered.
Instead the family has moved on, with strength and spirit, and help from many.
The lawyer
What Rick Teissier remembers most about those early months after Hurricane Katrina was the scene in his neighborhood pharmacy: a long line of people with hollow stares and weary faces, all looking for relief.
Some, he says, were waiting for Xanax. Or Zoloft. Or Paxil. Or other drugs that would ease the anxiety and shell shock of living in a city still reeling from disaster. Everyone had prescriptions, Teissier included.
Five years later, Rick Teissier, lawyer, agitator, passionate booster of all things New Orleans, has rebounded from those stressful days, but it was a long, circuitous journey. He left his beloved city for California, then returned. He gave up his practice, then came back and started over. He sold his house in Uptown, then bought another in the same neighborhood.
He vows he'll never, ever leave again.
Teissier was lucky: He and his family fled to Las Vegas in one of the last pre-Katrina flights out. Later, his wife and young daughter temporarily relocated to Destin, Fla. He commuted there regularly, while working sporadically as a criminal defense lawyer amid the ruins of New Orleans.
But a year after Katrina, he and his wife, Nissa, decided New Orleans was no place to raise a family.
Even so, driving out of town on Interstate 10, he recalls, was like "leaving a lover you still loved."
Returning in 2007, he found a home for his family and moved fast to re-establish his law practice. "Everyone thought I was washed up," he says. "It took four or five trials to hear on the street that I was back."
He says he quickly realized the city had developed something of a new attitude.
"Before we were crazy, party crazy," Teissier says. "We'd celebrate anything -- 'It's Monday? Let's go out and drink.' ... Before, New Orleans was like a teenage city. I think Katrina made us like people in their 40s who start to think about bigger issues ... The 'city that care forgot' started to think about caring. It made us a more grown-up place, more mature, with a conscience."
Gussie and Osa
Gussie Glapion's path through New Orleans often takes her past the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center.
"They've done a remarkable job with it," she says of the gleaming 3 million-square foot building not far from the French Quarter. "Sometimes, I don't even think about it. Maybe it's buried in my subconscious."
"It" is the hellish four-day period Glapion spent in and around the exhibition hall five Augusts ago, when it was one of the most infamous shelters in the flooded city -- when its meeting rooms became open toilets, and its loading docks and lawns served as makeshift morgues.
Glapion was one of thousands who ignored Mayor Ray Nagin's pleas to evacuate as Katrina approached.
When the water was several feet deep inside her home, Glapion grabbed her 11-year-old Pomeranian, Osa, and trudged through the flooded streets to the convention center.
As many as 20,000 people had gathered there. There was no food or water or sanitary facilities for the masses who thought this would be their salvation.
By December, just four months later, Glapion was back in New Orleans, living in a FEMA trailer park.
And then another chapter ended: At midnight on May 31, 2006, Osa died.
As she grieved, she also searched for rental housing that she could afford, eventually finding an apartment across the river in Jefferson Parish.
Five years after the storm, Glapion's house remains boarded up.
Glapion has applied to Louisiana's Road Home grant program, designed to help storm victims get back into their homes, but old tax issues complicate the processing.
Still, when she sees the restored convention center and Superdome, she has faith that things will work out.
"They've turned these things around into doing a lot of positive things," says Glapion. "And so that's my goal, too. To keep climbing."
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