Evacuees Coming Home

By: Aisha QidwaeThe news:

Tens of thousands of revelers will flood the streets of New Orleans for the popular Carnival season, including many former New Orleans residents displaced by Hurricane Katrina.

Behind the news:

Carmen Cornin, 35, said her family will have a float in one of the Mardi Gras parades for the first time since Katrina.

But after Carnival ends on Feb. 5, Cornin will return to her new community, new job and new life—in Chicago.

According to a July report by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Chicago metropolitan area has mailing addresses for 4,780 evacuees, ranking 20th in the U.S.

After Katrina hit, Cornin’s 15-member family drove 18 hours before cramming into a two-bedroom Arkansas hotel room for a week. After a week in another motel and five months in her brother’s twobedroom apartment in Alexandria, La., Cornin’s family returned to New Orleans. “My mother had a two-story house. The bottom was submerged in water,” Cornin said.

In February 2007, Cornin got her job back in New Orleans, only to be laid off three months later. She applied for jobs in Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit and Los Angeles. She wanted her 14-year-old daughter to get a better education than what post-Katrina New Orleans offered. “I didn’t want to raise my daughter in the environment,” she said.

After landing a job as an insurance builder in Chicago, Cornin moved here in June 2007. “I have no regrets making the move that I did,” Cornin said.