VIDALIA &8212; Once Nancy Alfonso gets started, the words just seem to pour out.

Telling the story of what happened to her and her family during and after Hurricane Katrina hit St. Bernard Parish isn&8217;t easy for her, but it&8217;s something she&8217;s glad to do.

Alfonso, a nurse who worked at Lakeland Hospital in St. Bernard Parish, was at Chalmette Medical Center taking care of patients when Hurricane Katrina struck South Louisiana.

She and other medical personnel were taking care of 25 patients who could not be moved before the hurricane hit. Things quickly got bad, with little food and no power, but hospital workers did what they could to help patients for six days until they could be rescued.

&8220;We put all the people in the halls because the windows started breaking and part of the back of the hospital fell out,&8221; Alfonso said. &8220;And we only lost one patient, and she was 97 years old.&8221;

Nancy&8217;s son Chad Alfonso had moved his family to a friend&8217;s house that was on slightly higher ground &8212; not that it would do them much good. When the storm hit, the water started to rise and the family was forced outside, climbing trees to stay above the water. &8220;I said, &8216;We&8217;ll get in the tree as as the water rises we&8217;ll keep climbing. But after a while, we were freezing from the wind and rain,&8221; Chad said. &8220;I had to cut a hole in the roof with an axe so we could go back inside.&8221;

They were rescued by boat and taken to the St. Bernard Parish Courthouse, which was dry but had no supplies and a swiftly growing population, including six dead bodies. Chad said he feared for his family&8217;s safety and tried to get them out as soon as he could. A ferry to Algiers the family was on was shot at, forcing it to turn around and wait for other transportation. It was an adventure getting out of St. Bernard.

&8220;We went from house to tree to boat to truck to ambulance to van to the shelter,&8221; he said. &8220;We went just about every way you could.&8221;

In all, 13 family members got to New Orleans, where they resolved to stay together no matter what, Chad said.

Eventually, all of them crammed into an ambluance for a ride to Baton Rouge, where they were offered a ride to a shelter in central Louisiana.

But there was one member of the family that didn&8217;t make it. Nancy&8217;s mother was left to die in St. Rita&8217;s Nursing Home, Nancy said.

&8220;I was there saving 25 other people&8217;s mothers while they let my mother drown,&8221; Nancy said.

The only picture Alfonso still has of her mother is a driver&8217;s license. &8220;We&8217;re hoping this week we&8217;ll be able to bury my mama,&8221; Nancy said.

A nephew who is working on relief efforts in the south Louisiana found Nancy&8217;s mother&8217;s body, still in her bed at St. Rita&8217;s. The body is still in a large morgue set up in St. Gabriel, La., but Nancy said the family is hoping to bury her in Metairie, in a plot where other relatives are buried.

Eventually, the Alfonsos found each other and traveled to a shelter at a Jena church.

Things are getting better. The family spent more than a month in the Jena shelter, but last week Nancy and husband Martin moved into a FEMA-provided mobile home at Donald&8217;s Camper Village. Chad, Jessie and Dillon are in a mobile home next door. They&8217;ll likely be there for the full 18 months FEMA allows.

Nancy hasn&8217;t lost her sense of humor. Wearing a Jena High School T-shirt Wednesday afternoon, one of the few pieces of clothing she has, she joked: &8220;I&8217;m their oldest cheerleader.&8221;

But until she&8217;s home in St. Bernard Parish, Nancy won&8217;t be satisfied.

&8220;That&8217;s where we live. We have to go home,&8221; Nancy said. &8220;I used to look out our front door at the bayou and see white pelicans, brown pelican, alligators, everything out there. The bayou is a part of us.&8221;