The fire marshal: ‘Everything we did in New Orleans, we do it here’

While Hurricane Katrina was still churning in the Gulf of Mexico, Reginald Alexander was thinking about going fishing.

But on Aug. 27, 2005, as the powerful storm began moving toward New Orleans, Alexander’s plans — both immediate and future — changed dramatically.

Instead of getting ready for a fishing trip, Alexander began packing to leave town.

New Orleans would never really be home again.

The inspector and arson investigator for the New Orleans Fire Department wasn’t on call that weekend, giving him the chance to evacuate with his wife and five children.

As a Navy reservist, he was familiar with Dallas-Fort Worth, having spent two weeks training at Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base Fort Worth in 2004.

After arriving, his family found rooms at an Addison hotel.

“We brought enough clothes for three days,” Alexander said.

Within days, he learned while watching TV in his hotel room that his home in the Gentilly neighborhood, two blocks from the University of New Orleans, was under 11 feet of water.

Alexander returned to his hometown to work, and for the next six months, he lived on a Carnival Cruise ship docked in New Orleans. On his days off, he drove to Carrollton, where his wife, Lana, would eventually find work in the Carrollton-Farmers Branch school district.

New Orleans “was a desolate city,” Alexander said. “I had never seen anything like it. I had lived there all of my life, and for certain parts of the city to be vacant, it was an eerie feeling.”

In March 2006, he landed a job with the Farmers Branch Fire Department and bought a home in Carrollton.

For Alexander and his family, the transition was fairly smooth. Dallas-Fort Worth shared some similarities with New Orleans, he said.

“It reminds me of New Orleans because it’s such a melting pot,” said Alexander, who became Cedar Hill fire marshal this year. “We kind of fit right in.”

He goes back to New Orleans about once a year and sees the changes.

“Growing, progressing, slowly but surely,” Alexander said. “There are still some areas where the streets are bad. Some of those areas have been forgotten, in my opinion.”

While he misses New Orleans, Alexander said, he doesn’t yearn to move back.

His family attends Our Mother of Mercy Catholic Church in Fort Worth, where many Louisiana and Mississippi transplants also worship. He has connected with other former Louisiana residents as well.

“We maintain our culture here,” Alexander said. “We cook our gumbo. We cook our étouffée and we do our crawfish boils. Everything we did in New Orleans, we do it here.”

He still owns the lot in New Orleans where his home was, and he said he may rebuild one day. But it would just be a place to stay when visiting family and friends.

Alexander said many middle-class residents from New Orleans have recovered and are thriving in Texas.

The only thing missing is the keepsakes from when he was growing up.

“We had homeowners, we had flood insurance, so we recovered. But the mementos we lost can’t be replaced,” Alexander said.

This story was originally published August 21, 2015 at 11:06 AM with the headline "The fire marshal: ‘Everything we did in New Orleans, we do it here’."