• Click the above to zoom.
• Click the thumbnails to the right to change location.
A fierce and rapid flood from a breached levee yanked Robert Green's house off its pilings three hours before Hurricane Katrina hit land.
1. Green home
At 4 a.m. on August 29, Jonathan Green alerts his brother, Robert, to tell him that their Tennessee Street house is filling with water. The two men scramble to get their five helpless charges into the attic. The flood rips the house off its pilings soon after Jonathan kicks a hole through the rafters so the brothers could move the family to the rooftop.
As their floating house disintegrates beneath them, Robert and Jonathan drag their family from the roof to a truck. The men move: their mother Joyce, 73; Robert's granddaughters, Shenae, 3, Sheniya, 2, and Shemiya, 4, and their mentally-delayed cousin, Herman, 51. They stay on the truck for 20 minutes until it starts to tilt and they seek another rooftop.
The family climbs from the top of the truck to the top of a nearby house, where they rode out the storm, wrapped in insulation culled from debris. Three-year-old Sheniya Green fell from the roof into the water as her grandfather helped move her sisters. She never resurfaced. Joyce Green falls into the water three times and her sons resuscitate her after the last drop. She dies while Jonathan shields her with his body with his during the storm.
Robert Green watches his mother's body - still on the rooftop where he was forced to leave her - from the Claiborne Avenue Bridge. An Army truck later takes his family to the Superdome. He later relocates to Tennessee to join his brother, David.
above to zoom.
At 4 a.m. on August 29, Jonathan Green alerts his brother, Robert, to tell him that their Tennessee Street house is filling with water. The two men scramble to get their five helpless charges into the attic. The flood rips the house off its pilings soon after Jonathan kicks a hole through the rafters so the brothers could move the family to the rooftop.
As their floating house disintegrates beneath them, Robert and Jonathan drag their family from the roof to a truck. The men move: their mother Joyce, 73; Robert's granddaughters, Shenae, 3, Sheniya, 2, and Shemiya, 4, and their mentally-delayed cousin, Herman, 51. They stay on the truck for 20 minutes until it starts to tilt and they seek another rooftop.
The family climbs from the top of the truck to the top of a nearby house, where they rode out the storm, wrapped in insulation culled from debris. Three-year-old Sheniya Green fell from the roof into the water as her grandfather helped move her sisters. She never resurfaced. Joyce Green falls into the water three times and her sons resuscitate her after the last drop. She dies while Jonathan shields her with his body with his during the storm.
Robert Green watches his mother's body - still on the rooftop where he was forced to leave her - from the Claiborne Avenue Bridge. An Army truck later takes his family to the Superdome. He later relocates to Tennessee to join his brother, David.