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August 31st, 2008
Posted: 06:43 PM ET
(CNN) — Roberto Ascencio has lived in the New Orleans area for 30 years, 28 of them on the West Bank of the Mississippi River. He’s left the city several times ahead of hurricanes, but this time it’s a little more worrisome. His restaurant in Gretna, which opened little more than a year ago after being delayed by 2005’s Hurricane Katrina, is on the line. As the sun set behind him Sunday, Ascencio was driving east on Interstate 10, closing in on Biloxi, Mississippi — 60 miles east of New Orleans — after 16 hours on the road. His wife, daughter, three cats, three dogs and two birds are with him. “We just took off,” he says. “We don’t know where we’re going right now. It’s just crazy.” “Traffic is pretty light,” Ascencio told CNN. “But it was bumper-to-bumper for about 10 hours trying to get out. “It was very light when I left my house,” he said. “I thought it was going to be a piece of cake. As soon as we hit the interstate, it was bumper-to-bumper. It was very, very slow-moving.” Ascencio and his family fled New Orleans for Houston, Texas, three years ago, as Katrina bore down on the city. That trip took 18 hours, he says. But the worst part was his restaurant. “We were just two months away to open up and the whole thing came down,” he says. “After Katrina, it took us almost a year and three months to get ready to open again. It was very hard to get back to where we were, because the money was gone. For some people it was even worse, because they had taken out loans.” Ascencio says he took all the precautions he could before he left Louisiana, safeguarding his stocks in the restaurant and moving possessions in his two-story home upstairs. But supplies were in short supply — the local home improvement store was all out of plywood to board up the restaurant windows when he arrived. “I’m worried because it’s my livelihood. My wife runs the restaurant with my sister-in-law. We worked so hard to get there. If it gets destroyed again, I’ll probably go bankrupt. I’m just praying that it’s going to be OK.” Praying is all he or anyone leaving New Orleans can do at this point. Hurricane Gustav is steaming across the Gulf of Mexico to make a Monday arrival time in the Crescent City, and thousands are streaming out of the way. “Everybody on my side has Louisiana license plates. It looks like we own the whole highway,” Ascencio says, almost laughing. But just as quickly, his voice shifts back to a serious tone. “I hope everything is well. I’ll need to get back and see how things are going, but right now we’ve just got to keep going.” |
 
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