Hurricane Veteran Thought He Had Nothing To Fear
Submitted:		N.O.V.A. December 2005
Source:			Times Picayune 12-04-2005

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"I've survived the eye of two storms and I thought Katrina would be just
another storm. Never in my wildest dreams did I think the floodwalls would
just fall apart."

Lakeview resident Ralph Pausina, 67, is an experienced oysterman, so he
didn't fear the worst when Katrina approached. He opted to stay at his
property on Louisville Street while his wife, Patsy, and some of her friends
evacuated to Houston.

"I love the water," Pausina said. "The world doesn't move without the water.
It's in my blood, my love for the water. It's why I do what I do and live
where I lived."

Sunday evening, Pausina slept on and off in the second-floor hallway of his
house. Having ridden out so many previous storms -- "you name 'em and I've
survived 'em all," he says -- Pausina said he felt he pretty much knew what
to expect in terms of wind and rain. It was all a waiting game, he said. By
daybreak, he tired of the radio reports and TV accounts, and wanted to see
for himself what things looked like outside.

He went to his carport and took some photos of the downed trees. After
assessing the damage, he said, he figured there was nothing left to do but
wait for the power to come back on. So he went back inside and poured
himself a glass of milk. He then retreated upstairs with a portable radio
and TV.

Sometime around the middle of the afternoon, he said, he began to hear
gurgling sounds.

"I looked all around the house, then finally outside, where I saw that my
porch, which sits 2½ feet off the ground, was covered in water," said
Pausina.

He turned from the water and went to work moving possessions upstairs.

"Like a nut, I started picking up things like the dining room chairs and
little pieces of papers, for some reason. It wasn't until the water was up
past my knees that I realized it was pointless -- I needed to get out before
the water rose too high."

Upstairs, Pausina packed some clothes, his medicine, his wife's jewelry, a
box of cigars and their passports. When he looked at the water again, it was
one step away from the second floor. Pausina grabbed his bags and climbed
out the bathroom window onto his roof. Rather than stay there overnight, he
retreated into his home, thinking that surely someone would come to offer
help.

He said he'll never forget the calm, quiet of that night, which was pierced
just before sunrise by a neighbor's cry for help.

"Then as the sun came up, I could hear someone yelling from another
direction," Pausina said. "I saw a Coast Guard helicopter scoop up a man who
was all wet. Shortly after that, men in a boat pulled up just outside my
house. They were brave, brave men."

There were three men from FEMA in the boat and a man named Donald Wood Jr.
who let rescuers use his private vessel. The men helped Pausina off the
roof. He told them about the neighbor he had heard the night before. When
they found the man, he was dead in his attic.

Pausina's next stop was the Interstate 10 Causeway Boulevard exit. Pausina
and hundreds of others were bused to the East Park Community Center in
Houma. He was able to reach his friends and family to let them know he was
alive.

He said that when he sat down that night, he opened a bottle of wine and
downed it.

"I was in a total state of shock, like a zombie," said Pausina, now
temporarily residing in Mandeville. "There was just so much good that
happened to me. The man that gave his boat, the kind ladies who donated
their time to drive us to the shelter. The hundreds of people who helped us
as we poured into Houma, all of them were so wonderful to every single
person, even the bad apples."

Pausina tears up thinking about the ordeal he survived.

"There were good things to come out of this," he said.