Photograph by Gus Bennett
Update- Jean Joseph still lives in New Orleans, and is turning her screenplay into a book. She’s also finishing a documentary called “Broken Mirrors – I am Not my Scars.”
NEW ORLEANS – Jean Joseph remembers that she couldn’t run, because the rubber in the soles of her shoes had melted into the floor.
She remembers thinking that her friend looked like a human x-ray, because she could see the bones of his skull and spine as if she were seeing right through him.
She remembers the nurses who were so rough with her they made her cry, and the ones who were as gentle as angels.
Almost one year after Hurricane Katrina, on August 26, 2006, Jean Joseph got the FEMA trailer she’d been waiting for. A friend had allowed her to put it in a big yard in New Orleans East.
The inspector for the trailer company showed Jean around inside and answered her questions. She had been curious about the stove, and the inspector showed her how to start the burners. Outside, he showed her the propane tanks and had her sign the paperwork.
In the federal government’s initial, disorganized response to the storm, journalists reported on the desperate plight of flood victims who lacked temporary housing. Thousands of FEMA trailers were sitting in a field in Arkansas, miles from where they were needed. But Jean Joseph had not been warned about a danger she’d face when she finally got one.
According to statistics from the Louisiana Fire Marshal’s office, reported by freelance reporter Mark Robinson in Gambit in 2007, there were nearly twice as many fires as usual between 2005 and 2006– involving mobile homes.
When asked about the numbers, Deputy Chief Fire Marshal Brant Thompson told WGNO that they may not be accurate. Thompson said his office has changed its data bases four times since Katrina, and he couldn’t vouch for the Gambit report. But the risk of propane gas inside a small space is very real.
On the day Jean signed the inspection papers, she waited for a friend, Bernard Mabry, to join her. Together, they walked around the outside of the trailer, and then opened the door to go inside. Jean has written a screenplay that describes what happened next. Reading it is not for the faint of heart.
From “And Still I Rise” by Jean Joseph:
Jean walked over to the bed
and started to empty the overnight bag. She noticed a
strange smell…
Suddenly,there is a loud noise behind her…
What the hell?
Jean turn toward the source of the noise. (Bernard) is on fire.
He’s moving animatedly like a wind-up toy and yelling. The
yellow and blue components of the fire separated and are
spreading across the trailer’s interior. Meanwhile,
a massive blue ball of fire is hurling toward her. She
glanced toward the door, but the fear of the fire prevented
her from moving. She decided it would be quicker to turn her
back to the fire than to try to escape. She’s
immediately engulfed in flames and begins to scream.
They screamed together in pain and agony.
(screaming)
God please, help us! Lord have
mercy!
(Screaming)
Help! Lord, have mercy. Jesus!
When the inspector showed Jean how to use the stove, he had inadvertently left the burners open, allowing propane gas to fill the trailer. When Jean and Bernard stepped inside, the gas ignited, causing a fiery explosion.
They were both flown to the Galveston Burn Center in Texas, where Bernard died 19 days later.
In the screenplay, Jean says she saw him in a dream, standing by her hospital bed, alive and healthy, telling her goodbye.
Over the next six months, Jean endured multiple skin grafts in Galveston and at the burn unit at Baton Rouge Medical Center. Today, she jokes that she has had so many surgeries, “80 %” of her body is a “graft.”
Still, 13 years after the fire — and on the fourteenth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s strike on the Gulf Coast — Jean calls her life “blessed.”
A local law firm sued the trailer contractor and won a settlement that has allowed her to live independently in her own home. She got a degree in humanities from Loyola University. And she was encouraged by her sister to write the screenplay about the fire that nearly killed her.
The screenplay ends with the fulfillment of a promise Jean says she made to God. If he would heal her enough to be able to walk again, she would “second line” out of the hospital.
On the day she was discharged in January 2007, with Mardi Gras beads and a parasol provided by nurses, Jean kept that promise.
From “And Still I Rise,” by Jean Joseph:
Wait ’til you hear the music before
you come out.. Deidre put the
beads around Jean’s neck and hugged her. When she hears the
music, she dances out of her room and down the hallway.