May 1st, 2011
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Author: FULTONDALE, Alabama — Tammie Marchese is all too familiar with losing everything.
Evacuating to Birmingham just before Hurricane Katrina, she returned to find her Chalmette, La., home had been swamped by oil-tainted floodwater. Two weeks after Katrina, her husband, Angelo, 48, died of a heart attack in their hotel room.
In the ensuing years, Marchese and her daughters Brandy, 13, and Angelique, 16, struggled to rebuild their lives. She worked at Walmart in Chalmette and got a job at the Gardendale Walmart. A co-worker set her up in a house he owned in Fultondale.
Then Wednesday, nature’s fury found her again. She’d heard the warnings on the way home from work but was unsure of the storm’s track until she looked out the window. She grabbed Brandy.
“We started running toward the basement. We felt the ceiling lift and glass shattered,” she said, tears welling in her eyes.
They only made it as far as the hallway and went down on the floor.
“In that hallway, a lot of things were going through my mind,” she said.
They survived, but, again, most of their possessions were ruined.
Fortunately, they have family. Relatives were on hand Saturday, helping the Marcheses pick up. She and her daughters have moved in with her mother, Yolonda Roussel of Hayden. The family’s church congregation is rallying around them.
Marchese’s brother, Lucien Roussel, a retired New Orleans policemen who also now lives in Hayden, was helping clean up Saturday. Watching his sister tell her story, he said that was the first time since the tornado he’d seen her cry. The family will make it, he said.
“We are survivors,” he said adamantly.
Join the conversation by commenting below or e-mailing Spemcer ay tspencer@bhamnews.com.
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