ABC13 takes a look at Hurricane Katrina’s impact on Houston 20 years later

This Friday will mark 20 years since Hurricane Katrina forever changed the city of New Orleans. In the days and weeks that followed, Houston housed over 200,000 people from New Orleans in need of a place of refuge after the storm. ABC13 meteorologist Elyse Smith reports on the impact that event had on Houston 20 years later.

Many recall Hurricane Katrina as both a natural and man-made disaster, as it was both the force of a major hurricane and the failure of the levee system that led to the extensive damage and loss of life in New Orleans.

Ronisha Johnson is an attorney based in the Woodlands who came to the Houston area the day before Katrina. This was just after attending her first day of high school in New Orleans. She recalls her mom telling her, “Go ahead and pack your bag for the weekend because there’s a hurricane coming.” Like many along the Gulf Coast, Ronisha was no stranger to tropical storms or hurricanes, or the notion that you might need to leave to get out of harm’s way.

This time, Ronisha, her sister, and mother came to southeast Texas to ride out the storm with their in-laws. She had no idea then that she would never return to her childhood home.

“Hurricane Katrina was one of many instances where I realized God showed me that life can change in an instant. And when I say life, I mean my entire life. Everything I know can change in an instance,” Ronisha said.

And at the time, how could she have known? Even those who chose to ride out the storm and not evacuate were caught off guard. Especially when the levees broke, leading to the rapid rise in water and extensive flooding that Katrina is remembered for. Former Houston Mayor Bill White recalls hearing early on about the broken levees.

“Once those levees broke, the water system and power system would go out, and the city would become uninhabitable,” White said.

Bill White was the mayor of Houston when Katrina hit. He made the decision to bring people from New Orleans to Houston who needed food, water, and shelter. The greater Houston area took in over 200,000 people in the days and weeks that followed. And by his estimates, around 60,000 people from New Orleans became permanent residents in southeast Texas after Katrina.

This includes Ronisha, noting the sense of community she felt after coming to and staying in the Houston area after such a tragic event happened to her hometown.

“I started to really build a community, make friends, some from New Orleans. And we bonded because of what we were going through,” Ronisha said. Adding, “We were all in this new world together.”

She tells ABC13 Meteorologist Elyse Smith that she even met her then boyfriend, now husband, when she started attending high school in southeast Texas. He also was from New Orleans and came to the area after Katrina. She now is married with two children too.

And while Ronisha loves her life here in Texas, she wishes she had a few precious memories of life before the storm. Like a childhood scrapbook that she made that featured all of her goals and dreams.

“I drew a news article saying I was an attorney and I won this huge case. And I would love, being an attorney now, I would have to have that to know where I started, where my dreams began,” she said.

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