Seven years later, Maricopans remember Katrina

Seven years to the day Hurricane Katrina, one of the five deadliest hurricanes in the nation’s history, landed, residents of the Gulf Coast are watching Hurricane Isaac slowly approach landfall, according to the National Weather Service.

As newly constructed levies are being tested in the South, many Maricopans will remember when the community banded together to help Katrina refugees.

Longtime Maricopans Will and Cindy Dunn brought 25 displaced families back to Maricopa.

Their Action Alliance Network was formed specifically to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina, Cindy Dunn said Tuesday.

“We sat and watched the disaster from our living room,” she said.

“The people of Maricopa donated all kinds of things,” Dunn added.

Her husband and Pastor Art Tidwell of the Scottsdale First Dream Center Church packed the donations and other supplies and headed to New Orleans.

“There were two things at (the shelter) that were really helpful to the people there,” Cindy Dunn said. One was adult diapers and another was a suitcase full of toys for the children.

“When they opened up that suitcase full of toys, it was incredible,” she said. 

Pastor Rusty Akers of Community of Hope Church remembers one of those families brought to Maricopa, Russell and Renetta Green and two of their daughters. Green was a chef at the Harrah’s New Orleans.

The Dunns, Akers and what would soon become the church community found a new home for the family.

“We adopted the family even before we were publicly meeting,” Akers said. “They came with nothing but the clothes on their back.” 

Once a home was found for the Greens, The Room Store in Phoenix donated furniture and the church bought the family clothes and food.

After a Sunday service, “We handed them the keys to the house and took them over there.”

“It was kind of like ‘Extreme Home Makeover,’” the pastor said.

Akers said, after spending three or four years as Maricopans, the Greens returned home to New Orleans.

Robert Livingston, general manager and vice president of Harrah’s Ak-Chin Casino, worked at Harrah’s properties in the South and said people there are no stranger to hurricanes. 

“People grow really accustomed to hurricanes and probably don’t take some of the warnings as seriously as they should,” Livingston said. “They don’t really get excited unless it’s a category 3 and above.”

“It probably contributed to the Katrina tragedy,” Livingston said.

When Katrina struck Livingston said “we took in employees from New Orleans.”

He said those employees have all left the property, but company tried to find jobs for displaced employees when they could.

“One guy got in his car and just drove as far as he could to get away,” Livingston said. “Fortunately we could find a place for him.”

Livingston pointed out it was the flooding from the levies breaking that devastated Louisiana, but in Mississippi, where he was born, the devastation was more a direct result of Katrina itself.

***ADVERTISEMENT***“You have to understand, New Orleans is a fish bowl,” Livingston said. “What got New Orleans was … levy failure.”

In Mississippi, however, Livingston said “those properties got completely leveled.”

Anticipating Hurricane Isaac, Livingston said the Harrah’s property in Biloxi was shut down at 10 a.m. Tuesday and Harrah’s New Orleans shut down at midnight.