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‘Can’t get any closer to God’
-------------------- Stacey Loftin
Stacey Loftin and her three children live in a “green superhouse,” built in partnership with Habitat for Humanity Bay-Waveland Area to the highest eco-friendly and energy-efficient standards. Among the house features: heat-reflective, hurricane-resistant Galvalume roofing made of mostly recycled content; dual panel windows; and low-emission paints, caulks and adhesives.
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Loftin, 35, is a veterinarian’s assistant born and raised in Bay St. Louis. She and her three children—daughters Jordan, 16, and Kirsten, 14, and son C.J., 9—survived a harrowing encounter with Hurricane Katrina, as they tried to ride out the storm in her grandmother’s house.
“My Mawmaw didn’t want to leave, so we stayed with her,” Loftin said. “Her house is at the highest point in Bay St. Louis, and it made it through Camille. If Katrina had come in at low tide, we would have been fine.” Katrina made landfall at high tide, though, and the water started coming in the back door.
“It was starting to get higher and higher, so we started loading everybody up in the attic,” Loftin recalled. Along with Loftin and her three children, her mother, her brother, her sister-in-law, her aunt, her aunt’s Yorkie and her brother’s two Labradors ended up seeking refuge in Mawmaw’s attic.
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“It was starting to get higher and higher, so we started loading everybody up in the attic,” Loftin recalled. Along with Loftin and her three children, her mother, her brother, her sister-in-law, her aunt, her aunt’s Yorkie and her brother’s two Labradors ended up seeking refuge in Mawmaw’s attic.
“I looked around and saw my girls sitting there spooked,” Loftin said. “My son was sitting in my mother’s lap, and she was rocking him. My eyes started watering up.
If we had to break through the roof, how was I going to swim with three kids? And my mom can’t swim. Who would I lose? I turned my back to them and said to myself, ‘You can’t think like that.’ |
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| “I stood there holding a hammer and I prayed. “Next thing I knew, the water started subsiding.” After the storm, Loftin found little to salvage when she returned to the two-bedroom home she and her kids shared. The entire complex was destroyed. They were issued a FEMA trailer, parked on the lawn of her mother’s house, and that’s where they spent the next two years. Eventually, her mother’s house was repaired enough for them to move in with her temporarily.’ |
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