Hope floats

She was unforgettable in Spike Lee's "When the Levees Broke." Now Phyllis Montana-LeBlanc explains what the storm took away -- and never could.

By Pasha Malla

Read more: New Orleans, Memoirs, African-Americans, Race, Life, Pasha Malla

Aug. 27, 2008 | Perhaps the most captivating part of Spike Lee's 2006 Hurricane Katrina documentary, "When the Levees Broke," was Phyllis Montana-LeBlanc. Some critics went so far as to call Montana-LeBlanc the star of the film, no small feat considering that it costarred one of the worst natural disasters in our nation's history. The then 42-year-old's account of fleeing the floodwaters with her husband, Ron, and their eventual return to New Orleans ranged from unbridled anger ("I will take you outside and beat your muthafuckin' ass!" she threatened a particularly unhelpful U.S. servicewoman) to devastating pleas for "some kind of compassion, empathy, understanding."

With its searing eyewitness accounts from survivors like Montana-LeBlanc, "When the Levees Broke" was the first large-scale attempt to humanize a tragedy otherwise conveyed in the media by vague statistics and sensational news footage. Encouragingly, a spate of first-person accounts, both in film ("Trouble the Water") and in print ("Voices From the Storm"), have tried to maintain focus on those who suffered through Katrina and, now, still struggle to put their lives back together.

Add to this burgeoning canon Phyllis Montana-LeBlanc's memoir, "Not Just the Levees Broke: My Story During and After Katrina." Written from the cramped confines of a FEMA trailer over the past two years, the book further details and updates the LeBlanc family's travails, concluding with an epilogue of "Katrina Poems." Full of struggle, survival and hope, Montana-Leblanc's story is a testament to the importance of New Orleanians' continuing to speak about what happened three years ago, and what is happening now -- both positive and negative -- as the city rebuilds.

Salon spoke with Phyllis Montana-LeBlanc from her new home in eastern New Orleans.

For people who haven't seen Spike Lee's documentary, can you explain your experience of the storm?

In the beginning, they were saying something was out there, Katrina was out there, and they didn't know which way it was going to go. We basically did what New Orleanians always do: We made preparations, we cooked some food to last three, four days, we knew we'd need water and stuff. A lot of times, in the past, it's always been that we prepare for the storm, get things ready, and [the hurricane] goes another way or it dissipates. If the government didn't think we should evacuate, then we thought we had a chance. So we all just stayed. We hunkered down. We got ready for it.

But what about when they did call for an evacuation?

That wasn't until Sunday [Aug. 28, the day before Katrina made landfall in New Orleans], and it was too late to leave. There was too much traffic out there -- if we'd left then, we would have been stuck in our car in the middle of the storm. We would have died. So I just walked outside and looked up at the sky to see what we were up against. It was ... it was beyond ominous. That's when the real fear set into my heart.

And then she came through. The apartment took a beating, the rooftops came off the apartment above and came down on top of ours, and the walls started bubbling -- there were bubbles all over the walls, water bubbles -- and my husband said he could actually feel the walls breathing against his leg, in and out. That's when I totally and completely freaked out. I was like, "We got to get out of here, it's going to come crashing down on us, we've got to get out of here."

And that was when you had your first glimpse of the rescue effort?

Yeah, just as we were getting up to leave, a helicopter came by and we were like, "We can go now, we're saved." They came right in front of our faces, and the [pilot] looked at me, but they left. I couldn't believe they were leaving us and they were that close. But my thinking afterward, after reason hit, was that there was only 5 feet of water [where we were] and they had to go and get other people who were in more dire need. I understand that now. And I have great respect for those people, the Coast Guard, because they helped us a lot. They're heroes. But when you're in a situation where water's rising, and you don't know whether people are drowning, it's a different story.

So we were stuck there, looking at two blocks of water, before we could get to higher ground. It was me, my husband, Ron, my sister Catherine and my mom, and she can't swim, and we've got my nephew Nicholas, and he's autistic and he can't swim either. We had to get to higher ground, so we got them on refrigerators, and facing us was the longest two blocks I've ever seen in my life. And then there were the alligators and snakes that we'd heard about being in the water, eating bodies and stuff. It was beyond horrific. There was just two blocks, but you're thinking you may not be able to make it even two blocks. And the water smelled horrible. I can still smell it to this day.

But you got out. After being split up from the rest of your family, you and your husband spent three months shuttling between hotels and the homes of friends and family before coming back to New Orleans. What was returning home finally like?

We came back because my husband, Ron, had to go back to work. [Ron LeBlanc operates a 200-ton crane for a company contracted to help reinforce the city's flood walls.] The city was in just total desolation. There was nobody. So it was hard seeing it like that, but this is where we're from. We had to stay and get our lives back.

So where are you now?

We spent nearly three years in a FEMA trailer set up on my sister Catherine's property, but five months ago we finally got our own place. The old apartment we were living in had been fixed up -- it looks like nothing ever happened to it -- but [instead of going back there] my husband and I bought a new home. It's wonderful. I still haven't gotten used to the space yet, after so long in that trailer. But we're back in eastern New Orleans, where we always were. Personally, I feel like I'm finally moving forward.

Can you talk about getting to tell your story, first in the film, and now in the book, and how that's helped the healing process for you?

It was hard at first. It was really hard. Just sitting down and remembering things, getting them out. But Spike and everyone who worked on the film were so supportive. It became like therapy, just talking everything out. So it was bittersweet but still really good to get a chance to share my story. I think everyone who's been through something like this needs to get the words down onto paper. Keep a journal. Write poetry. Anything. Just get it out.

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