By Mary L. Grady

Former Islander Andrea Cella Caplan found it odd that most everyone in New Orleans kept an ax in the attic when she moved there 11 years ago. She found out why soon enough. Residents never can tell when they are going to need the tools to cut holes in their roofs to escape their homes when the flood waters rise.

Caplan and her two children, Beverly, 4, and Jack, not yet 2, are refugees from Hurricane Katrina which slammed into New Orleans in the early hours of Aug. 29. The three are staying with her parents, John and Yaeko Cella, on Mercer Island. Caplan’s husband Craig is an emergency room physician. He stayed behind to help.

Caplan said she understands the seemingly nonsensical behavior of the people in her adopted city. Hurricanes and roof-high floodwaters are always in the back of everyone’s minds, she said. Yet she had never left because of a hurricane, perhaps even when she should have.

It is true what they say about New Orleans, she explained. “It is just one big extended family. New Orleans is a place that you just don’t leave.”

But the Caplan family did not flee from Hurricane Katrina. They were away from home in the Florida Panhandle for a brief weekend at the beach.

It was a trip anyone would take at summer’s end. They had gone to Destin Beach a few hours away on a quick visit, where Craig, a runner, was to compete in a race. They had planned on stopping at an outlet mall on the way home.

“We thought we would be gone 48 hours,” she said.

They left Friday afternoon before the storm and drove to Florida. They thought the storm was coming toward the Florida coast, near where they were headed. They calculated they could simply leave early to avoid the storm there. They put their dog in a local kennel and left food out for their two cats, picked up the children from their preschools and left.

“I had two T-shirts with me, two pairs of shorts, a bathing suit and these old running shoes,” she said pointing to her feet.

By the time they got to the beach, they heard that the storm was headed to New Orleans.

“So, we thought we would just stay at the beach — what a nice place to ride out the storm,” she remembered. “Then we heard it was a (category) 3, then 4 then a 5 storm and decided it was unsafe to stay on the coast.”

The Caplans drove to Atlanta to stay with relatives on Sunday morning.

Using the Internet, cell phones and watching television in Georgia, the couple watched the situation go from bad to worse.

They were able to follow what was happening on a local “parade cam,” a camera installed on the top of a bar on the Mardi Gras parade route, just a couple of blocks from their home. They watched until the power went off at 6 a.m. They kept calling their house and when the answering machine stopped picking up, they knew the power was gone there, too.

“We were still hoping that it would be okay,” she said.

Home for the Caplans is a 130-year-old three-story Victorian house that they bought two years ago and have remodeled.

“It is the place where family comes for holidays, for Mardi Gras,” she smiled.

It is built on brick piers that go down maybe 30 feet, she said, and the stained glass has survived a couple of big hurricanes before.

On Tuesday, Craig’s grandfather, 90-year-old Alvin Caplan, walked for three hours around fallen trees and debris to check on their house. He called to tell them that much of the roof was gone from the garage, but the house was intact.

But now that seems a long time ago.

“Our home seems to have survived mother nature, I just don’t know if it can survive human nature,” she said.

On the third day, Caplan flew to Seattle with her children with a single duffel bag. Her husband drove back to New Orleans to try and get back to the hospital where he works. He and his mother, who also lives in the city and whose own home is flooded, have been trying to find the family dog, an elderly Dalmatian who they can only hope was evacuated from the kennel.

Caplan is worried for her husband’s safety and family in the city.

But as of Monday, Craig Caplan had made it through a security checkpoint along Interstate 10, one of the few routes open into the city. He is back at work at his hospital where most services have been restored. A small group of hospital employees with armed security guards drove in the Caplan family, braved high water and debris to check on their own homes and neighbors

The Caplan’s street is flooded but their house is about 18 inches above the water and has escaped serious damage. Craig Caplan waded into the water under the house and found one of the family cats — good news for the children who have worried about their pets.

Meanwhile, Caplan has found a place for both children to go to school in Newport beginning this week. Island preschools are full.

It is important for them to be together, she said of her children.

“I don’t have any records for the children. Everyone has bent the rules for us,” she said.

Born in Japan, Andrea Caplan graduated from Mercer Island High School in 1990, then went on the University of Southern California and to law school at Loyola University in New Orleans. She is an attorney specializing in medical malpractice defense cases. Someone at her firm, she said, had the presence of mind to take the servers and computers.

“It all seems pretty small now,” she said.

Caplan sleeps finally but not well. She is horrified about what is happening to her adopted city.

It won’t go away, she said of the catastrophe. “People treat their animals better than this.”

“They can drop wind-up radios in Iraq but they can’t drop food and water to people right here,” she said.

She wants to thank her parents and all the people who have been so kind to her here.

She wonders aloud about the future, not knowing what will come tomorrow or the next day.

“We just want to go home.”