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KIM DAVIS, 47, of Pearlington, Miss., found a spot in a boat with 10 other people, including an 8-month-old baby.

We put the baby in a big Tupper-ware container and we put the lid on. We left part of it open for the baby to breathe through and we let her sleep the whole time. The rest of us in the Boston Whaler just watched the storm happen and hoped we wouldn't die.

MARIO SAPET, 56, of Biloxi, Miss., saved several neighbors from drowning in the storm.

The first thing to float down our street was a white car. The next thing was a raft full of pelicans grooming each other. I'm yelling at my wife to bring me something heavy to hold back the door and then suddenly the water just burst in. It looked like our house was in the middle of some rapids on a river. We started wading through knee-deep water and I heard our neighbor Lee yelling for help from the roof. All I could see was her leg hanging over the ridge and her hand on the chimney. When I came around her stepson was dangling on the edge so I climbed up and I got him down and I grabbed a 2x4 and I held it up and she used it as a foot stop and I slid her down the roof and grabbed her and pulled her around. [Sapet then evacuated a 92-year-old neighbor and her three children, all senior citizens.] I don't know if all these people were at the end of their ropes, but I knew they could use a little help. But then, I owed them a bunch of favors anyway. Because they're great neighbors, just great neighbors.

MICHAEL CLAUDEL, 40, of Waveland, Miss., helped several people and a number of pets flee rising waters.

We started out in a laundromat but soon we were standing in three feet of water. We got on top of the dryers but the water was rushing in. Then we opened up the attic and start putting everybody in there. The water starts coming in so we busted a hole in the ceiling. We took some boards and put them together so we could cross over the gable of the roof. We walked 40 feet along the back of the roof and we grabbed two 6x12s and laid them across a trailer next to the building, and then we built another bridge to a bathroom on the second floor of another building. The winds were blowing 100, 125 miles an hour, easy, but we got everybody over safely, including a blind man, six puppies and three birds. I think one of the birds got away. We lost one bird.

DEBRIA TRIPPS, 43, of New Orleans, hoped to ride out the storm in her home with family.

The next thing you know, the TV's floating, the icebox is floating. All we could do was get to higher ground. We ran up to the attic and I said, "Lord, what's my next move?" The kids are scared because the parents are crying. We were saying how we're going to change our lives for the better and all of the sudden, my cell phone rang. It was my son in Houston. The phone stayed on long enough for me to give him our address to send help, and then it cut off. That was the hand of God. We got up on the roof and eventually a helicopter rescued us. Unless you experience it, there's no way you can fathom what people will do to survive for themselves and their loved ones.

JAMES WARREN, 43, of New Orleans, rode out Katrina in his home and figured the worst was over when, on Aug. 30, water began flooding his home.

The house was filling up like a glass. It came up so fast and high it pushed me up to the ceiling. I started swimming out of my home and into the street. I saw a woman holding a newborn baby and trying to keep her toddler from washing away. I stayed in the water for six hours and kept yelling until the National Guard picked me up. So many others were calling out and no one was coming. I will never forget the horrible screaming around me.

PENNY DEAN, 50, in Pearlington, Miss., survived by climbing onto her roof and hanging on.

When the water started coming in, I grabbed some towels to wipe it up. Then I looked out the window and saw the water rushing at us. When I saw furniture floating by I thought, "I'm going to die." My husband, Tommy, and I went up to the second floor, but then water started filling up the floor and we broke out a window and got on the roof. I grabbed onto a tree next to the house and held on for dear life. I was watching clouds rushing overhead and waves rolling by and it was the most frightening thing I ever saw, but also beautiful at the same time. I was amazed by the power of the storm. I was getting hit by flying debris and the rain and wind kept me from breathing right. I felt like I was drowning. And then the eye of the storm passed, and everything got quiet. We lost everything. Katrina didn't care if you were poor or rich; all the houses look the same now. But I'm determined to get my life back. I want to look back on Katrina with a feeling of triumph—to say she tried to beat us down, but we wouldn't let her.

PARHAM JABERI, 29, in his second year of a medical residency at New Orleans' Tulane University, was assigned to treat evacuees at the Superdome and was overwhelmed by the crowds and poor conditions there.

They basically waited until 24 hours before the hurricane to get ready for the evacuees. We were short of supplies, food and water. Then I heard experts on TV speculate that the dome wouldn't withstand the kind of winds that were expected. I got scared, told my supervisor I was going, grabbed my bag of clothing and left. I know some will view me as a coward. What happened, what I did, is something that will be with me the rest of my life. Before long I began to feel guilty about leaving. I am a doctor and those people were my patients. The next day I learned that a Louisiana State University stadium was being turned into a triage center. I drove there and went inside and volunteered. [Jaberi treated hundreds of survivors for everything from dehydration to chronic diseases. He is still there seeing patients.] It's been life affirming, seeing all these people work together to try to save those who have gone through so much. I've seen so much concern for people, so much caring.

More From This Article

'i Still Hear Voices Screaming'
Billy Rhodes got permission to skip high school for a week so he could join some other volunteer firefighters from Point, Texas, on a rescue mission to New Orleans. "All I have to do," says Billy, 18, "is write a report about what I saw and I did."

It will be no ordinary report. On Aug. 30 Billy arrived in New Orleans to the sounds of people screaming for help. "But it was too dark and police wouldn't let us go in," he says. The next morning, while boating around the flooded city, he saw several children "with their heads sticking out of their attics, dead," he recalls. "Those were the screams we had heard."

Among his experiences as a rescuer: A woman handed him a bloody pillowcase. "She told me her baby son was in it," he says. "She gave birth to him on a roof while she was waiting to be rescued, and he died." Billy then joined some Marines on a rescue mission into the depths of the city. He saw dozens of bloated bodies float past his boat and watched many people drown. He saw a girl clinging to a piece of plywood, only to be pushed off by a man trying to save himself. "I grabbed her and pulled her into the boat," says Billy. "She just kept saying, 'My family is all gone.' " When the boat arrived at an evacuation site, he had no choice but to leave the girl there, even though there were no officials to release her to and mobs of people were fighting over supplies. "I wanted to stay with that little girl," says Billy, who fears she was too small and too weak to take care of herself.

More chaos awaited: people shooting at attacking alligators, patients deemed too sick to help and put aside to die. At the end of a week Billy came home profoundly changed. "He knows he can't take life for granted now," says his father, Charlie, a carpet cleaner. Since returning he has had to take medication to help him sleep. And he has yet to write that school report. "I'm having a hard time," he says. "I still hear voices screaming at me, saying, 'Help me, help me.' I know we couldn't save everyone. But I won't ever forget the screaming."

'new Orleans Is Going to Come Back'
Charmaine Neville couldn't make it out of New Orleans before Katrina hit. A popular local singer and daughter of Charles Neville, one of the city's famous Neville Brothers, she had just finished paying for a new roof on her 140-year-old home and "had not a penny," says Neville, 49. So she boarded up her windows and huddled in the kitchen with an elderly neighbor and pets. When Katrina arrived "every window on the north side of my house just exploded," says Neville.

After the storm, Neville took shelter at a nearby elementary school, sleeping that night on the roof to try and beat the heat. "I was awakened by this man holding a knife to my throat. I told him, 'Do what you want, just don't kill me.' When he was done raping me, he let me go."

Neville left the school and led neighbors downtown in search of a bus out of the city. "That's when I saw an alligator drag this man walking next to me on crutches under the water," she recalls. Finding an abandoned city bus, she helped several evacuees aboard and kept everyone calm by singing and telling jokes until they arrived at a town upriver. Later she was treated at a Baton Rouge hospital and reported the rape to police. Though still shaken, she plans to return home. "New Orleans is going to come back," she says. "This city isn't about buildings and trees. It's about people."

'anybody There?'
The day after the levee broke, Eric Rotts climbed into his 15-ft. bayou flatboat and set forth on a rescue mission. For the next 48 hours, the 38-year-old landscape engineer trawled the waters of the west end of the city, shouting "Anybody there?" whenever a noise broke the stillness. All told, Rotts rescued about 100 people before the ad hoc waterways became too treacherous for unarmed patrols. These days he repairs roofs and checks up on friends' homes. Despite the pleas of his two kids, ages 12 and 15, to join them and their mom at a relative's home in Memphis, he refuses to leave his home near New Orleans. "People fought for their lives and lost," he says. "That changes you forever."