Grueling 10-Day Escape From Katrina Ends in Southland

Lamont Dersone’s 10-day journey from New Orleans to his aunt’s house in Moreno Valley started in a Pontiac Grand Am speeding away from Hurricane Katrina, just before the storm crashed ashore.

It ended Tuesday, but only after a freight train derailment delayed him in Fullerton for several hours. In between, he slept in a shelter, on a hotel room floor and in a packed bus headed to Southern California.

Dersone is exhausted. He’s tired of crying for his friends who drowned in their attics, and for his house, most likely washed away. But mostly for his younger brother Eugene, who has been missing since Katrina hit Aug. 29.

“Everything’s just been in shambles,” said Dersone, 28, as he waited for his cousin to pick him up at the Metrolink station in downtown Riverside.

His mother made it out safely, along with his 7-year-old niece and some ailing great-aunts.

But scores of other relatives across Louisiana were still unaccounted for.

As black clouds and eerie stillness settled over the city Aug. 28, he rounded up a duffel bag of clothes plus student loan documents, DMV forms and bills, and he and six neighborhood friends jammed into the Pontiac. The car flew at 80 mph in and out of rising waters as wind and rain pummeled them.

After a few days at a shelter in Alexandria, La., Dersone’s other brother, Lamar, picked him up and drove him and two friends to a Hampton Inn in Houston, where his immediate family was taking temporary refuge -- nine to a room.

The family anxiously searched Houston for their missing younger brother, whom they had last seen on TV, wading through waterlogged streets of New Orleans, pushing a basket.

A buddy of Dersone’s offered them a sliver of hope: He had spotted the brother, Eugene James “E.J.” Dersone, at the Superdome earlier that week. They left E.J.’s name and their contact information with the American Red Cross in Houston, and information about the 21-year-old on the missing-persons message center at the Astrodome.

“When I think about it, I cry a lot,” Dersone said. “It just hurts a little bit more.”

Braving a two-day bus ride packed with other displaced Louisianans -- capped off by the train derailment Tuesday morning that halted his Metrolink train and forced him to switch back to a bus to get to Riverside -- Dersone finally ended up safe and dry at his aunt’s Moreno Valley home.

His aunt, Peter Mae Hampton, ran a makeshift news operation from her living room in Moreno Valley on Tuesday, eyes glued to cable news for any tidbit of information.

The Dersones are taking tentative steps to start a temporary life in Southern California -- even as they wait for word from E.J.

Dersone’s niece Alexis will enroll in the second grade in Moreno Valley today. Dersone has already found a stocking job at a Wal-Mart.

Already, he is thinking about when he can return home.