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Faced with disaster
Summer students safe after time
in Superdome

By Darla Brown

What began as a long-awaited trip to New Orleans turned into a nightmare for two Summer Research Program students who were attending the eight-week program at the Medical School from Taiwan.

Nicholas Yeh and Paul Lin decided to end their stay in the United States, which had been an opportunity to participate in the labs of Carmen Dessauer, Ph.D., associate professor of integrative biology and pharmacology, and William Dowhan, Ph.D., professor of biochemistry and molecular biology, with a celebratory trip to the Big Easy before having to return to Taiwan and their medical school studies there.

However, a storm was brewing in the Gulf, and Dr. Dessauer, who is from New Orleans, warned the students about the danger. “On Friday, I brought them to my office and brought up weather.com and showed them the hurricane – it was a category 2 at that time, and they didn’t know where it was going to land. I told them that I would feel better if they didn’t go, but if they did to make sure they left by 6 a.m. Sunday morning,” she recalls.

The two set off on their trip.

“Paul and Nicholas went ahead with the trip because they are used to typhoons living in Taiwan,” explains Ah-Lim Tsai, Ph.D., professor of internal medicine, hematology, who translated the online account that Yeh wrote in Chinese of his New Orleans adventure. “The difference is that in Taiwan, the building code is very strict – structures and homes are made of concrete, so you don’t see the damage there like you do here in a hurricane.”

Yeh and Lin had parked their rental car on Bourbon Street Saturday evening. After seeing some of the sights, they returned to see the car door broken, their laptop stolen, and the starter ruined. Now there was no way for them to escape the city, which was about to be the site of the country’s biggest disasters – Hurricane Katrina and her aftermath.

“We tried to get hold of the police, but at that time, mandatory evacuations had been issued,” Yeh writes. “At 5 a.m. we located a policewoman who took the report – she tried to collect evidence on the car but was unable to as a recent shower had washed any away.”

Yeh tried to reach the rental car company unsuccessfully, and finally, his cell phone battery died. He and Lin hailed a taxi back to the Youth Hostel they had checked into the night before, where they were soon evacuated by bus to the Superdome.

“We had to wait five hours for a safety check before entering the Superdome. We were excited not to have to buy a ticket to get into the stadium,” Yeh writes. That excitement soon would turn to worry and fear as the evacuees were forced to sleep on chairs and not able to take showers. As Katrina made landfall, the roof started to open noisily, water poured in, and the students were forced to move from place to place to stay dry. Strict rationing of food began, Yeh writes.

“I got a phone call on Tuesday. I think they borrowed the phone from the National Guard, and they told me they were in the Superdome. Then they called again on Wednesday. It was days before I heard from them again,” Dr. Dessauer says.

Tuesday was an “unfortunate day,” Yeh writes in his account. “The levees of Lake Ponchatrain broke, and we heard that patients in nearby hospitals have died. Our hearts drop upon this news, and we worry.”

The pair had trouble finding a clean place to sit in their attempts to move to higher ground. An officer showed them a safer place where they met more than 100 international visitors from Haiti, Brazil, and France. The officer was very nice and took good care of them, Yeh writes.

That evening, the group of international visitors fell asleep in a circle with the men on the outside and the women on the inside for protection, but Yeh writes that he didn’t sleep at all.

“When Nicholas called from the Superdome, he was scared,” says Rachna Sadana, Ph.D., a research fellow in the Department of Integrative Biology and Pharmacology who worked with Nicholas for eight weeks. “He told me that people were going crazy over there and that the evacuation process was very slow.”

The friendly officer told them that the group will move out of the Superdome slowly and in small groups, as to not draw attention. Yeh starts the trek out, when he realized his friend Lin is not at his side. “I panicked and started looking for him like mad. When Paul finally shows up, I was about to cry,” Yeh writes. Paul had come across two men from China and wanted to make sure he was with the group that was going to get out of the Superdome.

Dr. Dessauer says the foreign students, who were bussed to Dallas and then made it to Houston and eventually flew back to Taiwan Sept. 3, were traumatized by the experience in the Superdome.

“They were afraid for their lives – there was a lot of violence going on in there. There was little food or water, no showers – they had visibly lost weight, according to one person who had seen them,” Dr. Dessauer explains.

Thankfully, the students are safe at home. “Apparently there have been stories about them in their local newspapers – they are famous for having survived this,” Dr. Dessauer says.