Deep Community Ties Help Biloxi Vietnamese Neighborhood Heal And Recover
Release Date: April 14, 2006
Release Number: 1604-317
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BILOXI, Miss. -- Dylan Vu came to the United States with his mother, father and six siblings 14 years ago. They left Bien Hoa, Vietnam and settled in Mobile, Ala. Now he has a wife and a 4-year-old son living with him in a FEMA trailer in D’Iberville, Miss.
Hurricane Katrina not only made his home unlivable, it also shut down the Beau Rivage casino where Dylan worked in the marketing department, creating pleasant, comfortable experiences for casino guests. Everything in his world changed very quickly because of this storm.
On Sunday Aug. 28, Dylan’s extended family evacuated to Panama City, Fla. Dylan and a brother-in-law remained behind to ride out the storm, convinced that Katrina was not much of a threat. That night they went to the beach and enjoyed a beautiful sunset over calm water. They went home, had dinner, watched TV and went to bed.
About 4:30 Monday morning there was a knock at the door. A concerned neighbor was alarmed by the rapidly rising water. It was ankle deep in the street. But Dylan had confidence in the safety of his new rental home 45 feet above sea level and outside the flood plain. They went back to sleep.
At 6:30 a.m. they woke to find ankle deep water inside the house. Outside, it was up to their knees. In the next 40 minutes it rose to mid-chest.
With the pressure of the water working against them, Dylan and his brother-in-law forced open the door to the attached garage at around 8:30 a.m. Once inside, they jumped onto Dylan’s car, pulled down the ladder and got up into the attic. Dylan was very nervous because the water kept coming higher. “It felt like the water was chasing me,” he said.
They called 911 five times. When they finally got through, they were told that no one could get to them and to get to the highest place they could. By 11 a.m., they were looking down at about 9 feet of water and it was still rising. They heard someone hollering to them from outside and broke through the vinyl siding in the attic to find neighbors in a small skiff offering help. Dylan’s brother-in-law got in the boat while Dylan held on to the side. The wind was crazy and Dylan, who doesn’t know how to swim, was trembling. They headed toward a neighbor’s two-story house down the block. Half way there the skiff sunk. Dylan hung onto his brother-in-law who knew how to swim. Just when he thought that he “was dead for sure,” the water shifted, allowing him to hold onto the gutter on the two-story house. From their vantage point they could see the flooded, submerged landscape.
About 5:30 p.m. the water had receded to their knees and they walked back to Dylan’s house.
Inside his house, everything was floating. Looking out his living room window, he could see his neighbors walking around the neighborhood in shock. His car was flooded. They had lost their cell phones. There was no power. They were soaking wet and there were no dry clothes, no dry anything. Shivering, hungry and exhausted they walked around, dazed. Later that night, another brother-in-law came looking for them and took them to his home in Ocean Springs.
After the storm, Dylan volunteered a few weeks at his church in the Point Cadet neighborhood of East Biloxi. He helped the Red Cross distribute water and vouchers. He says, “I calmed down when I had to help other people. It was a good thing for me.”
He heard that FEMA was hiring and in September took a local hire position with its Community Relations (CR) program to work as an interpreter/translator at the Disaster Recovery Center in Ocean Springs. By mid-November, he was out in the field visiting Vietnamese neighborhoods, going door-to-door making sure that everyone knew what to do to get assistance.
Dylan is very committed to helping his Vietnamese community and is well-known by most of its members. When his colleagues found a Vietnamese man living in a tent months after the storm, they turned to Dylan for help.
The man was Tieng Van Nguyen, who left a refugee camp in Thailand 20 years ago to join his friend Hoang Luc in Biloxi. Tieng was a fisherman and found work in Biloxi as a deckhand on shrimp boats. He rented a room in Biloxi, but the storm severely damaged the house. Friends took him to live in their small trailer. After months of too many people in too small a space, Tieng needed to find a place of his own. He looked to his old friend Hoang for help.
Tieng asked if he could set up a tent in Hoang’s yard. Hoang agreed. Hoang’s house is completely gone—only a concrete slab and some marble tiles remain. Hoang’s wife and seven children temporarily live in Huntsville, Ala., and he and Tieng now work together on construction jobs. Then Hoang helped his friend one step further.
After Dylan helped Tieng negotiate the FEMA application process, a new FEMA trailer was delivered to the vacant slab on Hoang’s property. Hoang had agreed to let Tieng put the trailer on his land. Tieng is moving his modest belongings out of the cramped blue tarp shelter that he had made for himself. He is very happy.
Dylan continues to help people like Tieng recover and plan for the future. He enjoys his work with FEMA and is completing an accounting degree at the University of South Alabama. He is looking for a new home north of Interstate 10. He wants to put some distance between his family and the area devastated by Katrina. He hopes it will be far enough.
http://www.photolibrary.fema.gov/photolibrary/photo_details.do?id=23144
http://www.photolibrary.fema.gov/photolibrary/photo_details.do?id=23145
FEMA manages federal response and recovery efforts following any national incident. FEMA also initiates mitigation activities, works with state and local emergency managers, and manages the National Flood Insurance Program. FEMA became part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security on March 1, 2003.
Last Modified: Friday, 14-Apr-2006 11:16:00