Woman Spent Hours Trapped in Attic Before Being Rescued (Exclusive)

Lucrece Phillips was still in a body cast after undergoing neck and back surgery when Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans in August 2005.

As she and her family sought shelter in their attic from the rising floodwaters, Phillips’ daughter began writing their names on the ceiling, so their bodies could be identified if it came to that.

But Phillips, a 62-year-old poet and hairstylist, recalls telling her, “‘Oh no. We’re going to get out of this.’ ”

“Just that defiant spirit in me refused to die.” she tells PEOPLE.

While her family survived, trauma and tragedy would haunt them for years, but Phillips — one of the survivors featured in the new National Geographic five-part documentary, Hurricane Katrina: Race Against Time — found a way to come back home eight years later.

Two decades later, Katrina remains one of the deadliest and costliest hurricanes in United States history.

The storm first landed in the Big Easy on Monday, Aug. 29, 2005. That same day, floodwaters caused the levees separating the historic city from Lake Pontchartrain to fracture. By Wednesday, at least 80% of New Orleans was underwater. All in all, the storm led to over over 1,300 deaths and caused more than $100 billion in damages.

The National Geographic series dives into footage and narratives from officials leading the disaster response at the time, revealing incompetencies and false information from the media that cost locals their lives. It also puts a spotlight on the courage of first responders and survivors.

“This is far more than a story about a storm,” said executive producers Jonathan Chinn and Simon Chinn in a statement.

Phillips’ memories of those life-altering days are still painful to recall. 

Stuck in a partial body cast after leaving the hospital on Aug. 25, Phillips’ family insisted on staying with her in the Eighth Ward as Katrina approached. They even decided to throw a hurricane party, bringing beer, candles, dry goods and batteries.

“That party quickly turned bad,” says Phillips. In the series, she recalls hearing a levee break that Monday, resulting in water rising to the second floor of her home in the span of about 20 minutes. The house began teetering as it became unmoored from its foundation.

Despite their collective terror, Phillips says her faith in God saw her through. “We sang for six hours in the attic,” she says.

After daylight revealed the devastation around them, they were rescued by boat. It was on that boat ride that Phillips saw a sight that haunted her for years to come.

In the series, Phillips says she saw a dead baby in the water, one with freshly combed hair. The man operating their rescue boat wouldn’t let her take the baby to a nearby bridge so that the child could be identified. Instead, he pushed the deceased baby away with a piece of wood. 

“We’re worried about the living, not the dead,” she recalls the man saying in the emotional, on-camera interview. Phillips’ therapist would later instruct her to imagine that she’d taken the baby to an ambulance on the bridge instead, to help her sleep. “That’s how I finally got over that,” she says. 

The woman and her family were eventually evacuated to Texas, where the pain continued. Phillips, who was only supposed to wear her cast for six to eight weeks, was unable to have it removed until February 2006.

Her doctors were gone and there was nobody to follow up with — and she says that every time she went into the emergency room she was told she was a “malpractice suit walking” and there was nothing they could do for her. One kind male nurse finally helped her.

“He cut me out,” she says. “I looked like a lizard. My skin was peeling.” There was also mold that had to be washed off.

Another act of kindness was that Phillips’ family was given a house to stay in by a local judge, who didn’t charge them rent. He bought the stranded evacuees necessities and solicited donations on their behalf. But he was one of the few in the state who provided a warm welcome, Phillips says.

“We were treated like criminals,” she says. Her loved ones, who had no identification on them, were stopped by police and struggled to find work. Phillips says her daughter was sent to jail for unpaid tickets and she was fearful whenever her daughter left the house.

And in 2011, her 18-year-old cousin died by suicide because she was unable to return home to New Orleans, Phillips says. “That was heart-wrenching for my family,” she shares.

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Two years later, despite the PTSD she’s had since Katrina, Phillips finally moved back to her city.

“Coming back to New Orleans, I had to sit on the floorboard of the car because I couldn’t watch open bodies of water anymore,” she says. “All I was seeing was bodies, just dead bodies.”

Even stronger than Phillips’ fear is her love for her family, which made the move back to New Orleans possible. “I made up my mind,” she says, “and just came on home.”

As for the city itself, her main message is simple: fix New Orleans.

“Make sure the levees are straight. Get our infrastructure back up,” she says. “I want the spotlight to be shined on New Orleans. Not to point a finger at this one, that one, this one did that. Let’s do better. As a community, come together, let’s do better.”

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