Shannon Nolting and her children are now calling Bradford
home.

Nolting, a 25-year-old mother of three, decided to take Robert
and Robin Perez up on an offer for an apartment in Bradford when
she was left homeless when Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana last
month. They arrived in Bradford Saturday night.

“It seemed like we’d never get here,” she said Monday night.
“It’s going be a change. Definitely a good change.”

Nolting answered a newspaper ad placed by the Perezes offering a
furnished apartment thousands of miles from her home. Nolting
decided the change was worth it.

“I realized I did not want to build my life again and have it
totally wiped out all over again,” she said, adding the storms seem
to be getting worse and more frequent. “I don’t want to have to
build up my future to have it gone again.”

That’s when she decided to head north and start over.

Nolting’s struggle started when Hurricane Katrina was aiming
toward New Orleans at the end of August.

“I didn’t think at first it was going to hit us,” she said. “I
thought it would sideswipe us.”

Then, she saw the news reports having Katrina going straight
toward St. Bernard Parish.

As winds hit 120 mph, she picked up her kids and fled.

They went to the Terrebonne Civic Center and waited. After the
hurricane came and went, they tried to go home, but “there wasn’t
anything to go home to,” Nolting said.

“Everything was completely destroyed. The water was eight inches
from the roof. Everything in there was gone, everything covered in
mold,” Nolting said after father went back to their neighborhood of
Chalmette.

Nolting herself hasn’t seen her house since the Saturday night
before the storm because officials wouldn’t let her back in.

She did see photos, which “took my breath away. Nothing but
rooftops. This can’t be,” she thought after seeing the photos.
“I’ve never seen anything like this before in my life.”

Now, after Hurricane Rita hit this weekend, she’s sure there’s
nothing left.

“It’s completely under water again,” she said. “If there was
anything to salvage, I know now it’s not.”

Some of the things she will miss are photos of her three kids –
6-year-old Ivy, 5-year-old Kurdt and 14-month-old Dorian – items
her brother sent her from Japan where he’s stationed with the U.S.
Navy and the “little things” that can’t be replaced.

“You take for granted what you look at every day.”

Even a month after the hurricane, her family continues to look
for friends and family members.

“We are slowly finding people,” she said. “There’s still a lot
of people we can’t locate, don’t know if they are well.”

She still can’t find her uncle.

Her boyfriend stayed behind to wait out the storm, but she
couldn’t contact him for a while since the cell phones were not
working.

“He literally got washed right of the trailer” and spent the
next five days on the roadside collecting rainwater to drink.

“If he had stayed out there another day, he would have died,”
she said.

Nolting also left her father behind.

“He was upset,” she said of her family moving to Pennsylvania.
“He can’t deal with the cold.”

Up until the very end, Nolting wasn’t sure she’d make it out of
Louisiana.

When the winds from Rita picked up, she said “God, just please
get me out of this.”

After running into roadblocks – two flights were canceled –
Nolting and her children finally arrived at Buffalo-Niagara (N.Y.)
International Airport Saturday night.

“It was a struggle,” she said. “There’s so many people out there
in the shelter without homes … everybody is still in shock.”

Life in the shelter was “traumatic” and hard for her children to
sleep.

“They’d say ‘we want to go home’ and I’d explain our home was
gone,” she said.

Now, the children are starting a routine. Today, Ivy and Kurdt
will start school at George G. Blaisdell Elementary School.

“They are really excited,” Nolting said, adding they miss their
friends and are worried about their well being.

One thing they were surprised with was the landscape.

“We’re not used to the hills. The only thing tall (in Louisiana)
is the skyscrapers,” she said. “It’s a nice change for all of us …
it’s going to take a little getting used to.”

“It’s beautiful up here,” she said. “I love it so far.”

Nolting is also surprised of the generosity Bradford people have
bestowed on her.

“To see everybody coming together … there are people that
care.”

One person who has shown how much she cares is Robin Perez, who
worked to get Nolting and her children to Bradford.

“We have a lot of things in common,” she said of her and Robin
Perez. “This was fate. Definitely. It was fate.”