It took Lindsay Labanca a half an hour to pack her belongings and flee New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina hit.

She didn’t know what she needed, if she would ever return home or if she would have to start over. She gathered important papers, clothes and all she could fit in her Toyota Echo. Everything else she assumes was destroyed by the 14 feet of water that flooded her apartment.

“My home is gone,” she said. “The biggest loss isn’t monetary, though. It’s the loss of community.”

Labanca is a 1998 Louisiana State graduate who planned to attend the University of New Orleans for a second degree, but after Katrina hit, she decided to attend Iowa State. She had lived in New Orleans most of her life and took pride in her hometown. She fled to Ames with her fiance, Jack Klein, two weeks ago to enroll at Iowa State and start over.

Labanca and Klein had been planning to wait out the storm, but changed their minds when they heard the storm had grown to a Category 5 hurricane.

“When I saw ‘Category 5,” I started to cry,” she said. “I told Jack, ‘If we stay here, we’re going to die here.”‘

Labanca said the decision to leave New Orleans was difficult because she would be leaving the close-knit community she had become a part of. She was active in the voodoo and Wicca communities and had taken part in the well-known voodoo hurricane protection ritual just a month before Katrina hit.

When she got to Iowa State, Labanca assumed the voodoo tradition was not popular in Ames.

“I knew if I wanted the community back, I’d have to build it myself,” she said.

Despite the culture shock, Labanca said people in Ames have been very welcoming. Iowa State admitted Labanca after the normal registration deadline and she received in-state tuition and an offer for an emergency loan for books.

“When I give my license to people at bars, they get the deer-in-the-headlights face,” she said. “They ask, ‘Do you want this beer for free?'”

Labanca said it has been difficult fielding questions about her experience from curious students and Ames residents.

“I know they don’t mean any harm, but I watched my home wash away and have had to relive it over and over again,” she said.

Labanca and Klein, a former ISU student who recently finished five years of service in the Navy, said they do not agree with the way the federal government addressed the evacuation and relief effort in New Orleans. Labanca said residents have expected a large-scale hurricane for years, but nothing had been done to prepare for such an event.

“People were all about New Orleans when it was an important port city or they went to Mardi Gras, but no one could cough up the money when we needed to rebuild the levees,” she said.

Klein said he has heard comparisons between the way New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin handled the hurricane and the way former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani handled the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center.

“I don’t think that’s a fair comparison,” he said. “Giuliani only had an eight-block radius to deal with. New Orleans is completely destroyed.”

He said there is no transportation and several police officers have resigned or committed suicide.

Labanca said for every horror story about the hurricane, there is a hopeful one. She has witnessed several community members helping others through hard times. A friend’s aunt even offered her a spare credit card to help her escape.

“Everybody knows everybody here,” she said. “That’s part of the reason nobody wanted to leave.”

Labanca said she has experienced hostility from friends who plan to return to New Orleans.

“They say, ‘If you don’t go back, there will be no city to go back to,'” she said.

Labanca does not plan to return to New Orleans even if the city is rebuilt.