“I Came Back”: Frank’s Story, 20 Years After Hurricane Katrina

This story is part of a special series commemorating the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Through the voices of survivors, volunteers, and those who helped with the long-term recovery, we honor the extraordinary resilience of individuals and communities in New Orleans.

Frank Foto left New Orleans on August 28, 2005—the day before Hurricane Katrina made landfall along the Gulf Coast. It had been his birthday the day before, and he was still in a celebratory mood. He hadn’t planned to join the hundreds of thousands of people scrambling to leave New Orleans ahead of the approaching Category 5 hurricane. He thought he’d ride it out, like past storms.

But then he remembered what his parents always did. “My mom didn’t play around. If a storm was coming, she packed us up and got us out. That’s what saved us during Hurricane Betsy (1965). We had eight feet of water back then.”

This time, he followed her example. Frank left with a small group—his girlfriend, a grandmother, a newborn baby, some neighbors—and headed nearly 300 miles west to Lufkin, Texas. They all squeezed into one motel room and waited, watching the news.

“At first it didn’t look too bad,” he said. “We thought maybe New Orleans had dodged it. Then we started hearing about the levees breaking. They said a 30-foot wall of water came in from the Gulf. Just knocked everything down. Flooded the whole city.”

He didn’t know it yet, but his family home in St. Bernard Parish, sitting 15 feet below sea level, had gone underwater.

St. Bernard Parish, like much of the surrounding area, was catastrophically flooded. When the levees failed, a wall of water surged in, submerging the parish under 12 to 20 feet of floodwater. Entire neighborhoods disappeared beneath the surface. Some areas, including Frank’s, remained underwater for weeks. Nearly every home in the parish was damaged or destroyed, making St. Bernard one of the hardest-hit communities in the region.

“It was like a bomb hit”

Frank didn’t make it back to New Orleans for four months. When he finally returned, what he saw of his hometown looked like a war zone.

“Oh, devastation,” he said. “It was like a bomb hit.”

The roads had been cleared just enough to drive through. Crews had pushed trash and debris off the streets and onto people’s front yards—furniture, cars, branches, everything in piles. Doors were busted open all down the block.

“The military had been going door to door, kicking them in, looking for bodies,” he said. “Everything was turned upside down.”

The house, once his parents’ home, was soaked and silent. “That water did something,” he said. “You can fight fire. You can’t fight water like that.”

“This wasn’t just a rebuild. It was a rescue.”

For the next 10 years, Frank lived without a real home. “I was outside,” he said. “Slept right here on the property.”

His brother had an old motor home sitting on the West Bank, where the levees had held. “Didn’t flood over there,” Frank said. “So he brought it over and I stayed in that, right here.”

Even with his back issues and limited mobility, Frank tried to work on the house himself. “I used to do welding and construction. I did what I could. I’d stash whatever I found—trim, hardware, anything I thought I might be able to use.”

Progress was slow because he was doing it alone. And with no income and a bad back, the work stalled.

Nearly a decade after the storm, things changed. Frank connected with SBP, which helped him access the support and funding he needed to fix his home and recover from Katrina.

From there, the rebuild took off. SBP replaced the roof, windows, and plumbing; rewired the house from top to bottom; installed new HVAC and ductwork; and reframed doors and entryways. It wasn’t a patch job—it was a full restoration, from the studs up.

“This wasn’t just a rebuild,” Frank said. “It was a rescue.”

Among those who showed up was Sister Regina Marie, one of SBP’s earliest volunteers. She brought with her a group of high school students from Ursuline Academy, all young women ready to lend a hand.

“They came in and hung the sheetrock,” Frank said. “Finished it, floated it. Girl Power built this house.”

“I’m still here.”

Today, Frank is back inside the home where he grew up. It’s stronger now, built to last.

But the neighborhood around him has changed. “A lot of people left,” he said. “They’re not coming back.”

For years, St. Bernard Parish sat half-empty, with many lots vacant and houses abandoned. Then, slowly, the real estate market came back. “It was looking bad for a long time,” Frank said. “Then all of a sudden, new houses popped up all over. People started buying up the empty lots.”

His block is now a mix of old and new. What matters to Frank is that he’s still part of it.

Twenty years later, Hurricane Katrina isn’t just something to commemorate or to pick apart for lessons learned. Frank lived through it every single day for two decades. Recovery didn’t come fast to his neighborhood. It came person by person, nail by nail, year by year.

“I’m still here,” he said. “I came back.”