WSU Tri-Cities welcomes Katrina survivor into faculty

When Barbara Ward (shown here being filmed for a Tri-Cities TV news station), a 25-year veteran public school teacher, was plucked from the attic of her flood-swept New Orleans home in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, she had no idea where she would end up.

It turned out to be Richland, with a faculty position in the College of Education at Washington State University Tri-Cities.

Ward survived the flood that consumed her house in the Lakeview neighborhood by breaking through the living room ceiling and scrambling into the attic as floodwaters rose ever higher.

“It was like a scene from the movie ‘Titanic,'” she said. “The water was rising fast and running fast – like a river – outside the house. First it was up to my ankles, then my waist, then my shoulders. I ended up standing on the back of the couch, and before we got into the attic, the water was at nose level.”

When she finally broke through ceiling tiles to the attic, the water was within about two inches of the ceiling. “This was in the middle of the afternoon, it was pitch black, the water filled my house in 90 minutes, and we just barely made it through the hole I broke open with my hands,” she said.

“We” includes two of Ward’s cats, Tyger Tyger and Midnight, and her dog, Spirit. She was rescued the next morning when a lone boatman in a pirogue (a canoe-like wooden boat) heard her cries for help and broke through the roof into the attic sanctuary. Only Ward and her dog could get into the little boat. Tyger Tyger, the cat, was later found by emergency crews, and Midnight has been seen around the now-ruined house but has yet to be recovered.

Ward arrived in the Tri-Cities with just a pair of suitcases in hand and Tyger Tyger in tow. The dog stayed behind with her parents in Tennessee. It wasn’t a straight shot from Louisiana to the Tri-Cities. She spent time on New Orleans levy banks and broken causeways before being evacuated from the city. All the while she had just the clothes she escaped in and no shoes. Everything else was lost in the flood.

Three boat rides and three Army trucks later, she ended up at an evacuee center in Baton Rouge, 80 miles west of New Orleans. “There, I spent three days roaming around in a hospital gown with my dog on a rope. They wanted me to go to another shelter in Texas, but I said ‘no way,'” Ward said.

At the center, she met Sherry Harper and was invited to live with the Harper family in Baton Rouge until her future came back in to focus.

That future had already started to take shape in the Tri-Cities.

“One of our faculty members has a friend and colleague in New Orleans. She told him about Barbara’s situation, and we started the ball rolling,” says Betty Ward, director of WSU’s College of Education programs. Although they share a last name, the two Wards are not related.

Barbara Ward is now an assistant professor at WSU Tri-Cities. A recent doctoral graduate from the University of New Orleans and certified specialist in teaching gifted and talented students, she began her first classroom assignment at WSU on Monday. She is teaching “Innovations in Reading” to a group of graduate students.

The community has come together to support Ward. She is staying at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory’s on-campus guest house (http://www.pnl.gov/guesthouse/) through the 2005-06 academic year, which ends next August. Her apartment is provided cost-free by Battelle, which operates PNNL for the Department of Energy.

Through a local church and private individuals, a loaner car is being arranged.