THE SEARCH FOR MARCEL

Marcel Colar is 76 years old and he suffers from Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and he takes medicine daily for a thyroid condition. He lived with his daughter Felicia Colar and his grandchildren in New Orleans. Living next door to Marcel and Felicia were Marcel’s sister Teresa A”Nita” Colar and his niece Debra.A day or two before Hurricane Katrina ripped through New Orleans, Felicia, her stepdaughter and children (Andre Mims), her son Peter Colar and his family and children as well as Marcel Colar, Anita Colar, Marcel’s brother Bernard Colar, and other family members evacuated their homes in New Orleans and got a room at the Grand Palace Hotel on Canal Street. The family decided not to leave New Orleans this time as they had evacuated earlier in the year due to another hurricane warning and nothing ever happened to New Orleans. So this time they decided to stay in town but find high safe ground.After the hurricane, all family members were safe in the hotel until they went to bed and woke up to continuous rising water in the hotel. Eventually, the family realized that they had to get out of the hotel. I-10 was within blocks of the hotel and the family heard through the grapevine that evacuations were being done on the freeway that day. The younger men commandeered a green abandoned boat they found in the water and rescued the family and many others from the flooded hotel. The men and able-bodied women walked through water up to their necks with dead bodies floating around them, while transporting the elderly and children in the boat to “safety” on the I-10 bridge outside the Superdome.Unfortunately, after leaving the hotel, the nightmare for this family was just beginning. It took 4 more days for the family to be evacuated off of I-10. Trapped by surrounding water, the family and many others spent 4 long days and sleepless nights with little to no food or water, sweltering heat, stampedes to get to the little rations the National Guard eventually started throwing down from the sky, the indignity of using the bathroom onthe I-10 off-ramp that all had designated as the bathroom area, washing what little clothes they did have in an old water container and hanging them on the side of the bridge to dry, gunfire from above and below, dead bodies, people committing suicide, people dying around them, tales of horror from the Superdome, fighting, etc. Reporters were on the scene showing the atrocity of the situation on I-10 to the world while the peopleon the bridge had NO reliable information about when help was coming. Finally after 4 days on I-10, evacuation helicopters started airlifting people off the bridge beginning with the elderly and children.After hours of standing on the Interstate in the line to get evacuated, the family members were finally able to get Marcel out of the deplorable conditions on the Interstate, stuffing him into an abandoned grocery shopping cart and wheeling him down the freeway to the helicopter for evacuation (there were no wheelchairs and Marcel was by then too weak towalk). Marcel and his grandson Peter Colar left the Interstate on the helicopter which transported them to the New Orleans Airport while leaving the remaining family members on the I-10 for evacuation. Marcel did not have any identification on him during his evacuation (he left his wallet with his daughter on I-10). While Peter tried to provide the information to the National Guardsmen on the helicopter, in their haste to evacuate everyone, they were somewhat reticent to listen to Peter and take down theinformation he was trying to provide about Marcel.
Due to Marcel’s condition and extremely severe dehydration, Marcel’s behavior became increasingly erratic at the New Orleans Airport. Marcel was put on a stretcher, sedated and this time placed on an emergency medical helicopter for immediate evacuation out of the New Orleans airport to an unknown facility. The Guardsmen on the helicopter could not tell Peter where they were taking Marcel because the pilot wouldn’t know until theywere in the air. Peter gave as much information as possible to National Guardsmen operating the helicopter however, Marcel had no identification such as a license or medical card on his person at the time of evacuation. The whole family acted with faith that they would be able to reunite with Marcel and that he would be in the best hands by going where he could get proper medical treatment.Peter was taken by helicopter to the Austin Convention Center. Felicia, her stepdaughter and many of the children were evacuated off I-10 and taken on a bus. They were told originally that they were going to the Austin Convention Center but in mid-route their bus was redirected to a Salvation Army shelter in Beaumont Texas. So Peter was then separated not only from his children and his mother but also his grandfather, Marcel who was taken from him at the New Orleans airport.Peter was reunited with his family and children in Beaumont Texas almost a day after arriving in Austin.
See news story HERE. He was blessed enough that someone saw the news report on the Austin news channel and chartered a plane for Peter to fly back to Beaumont where he could be reunited with his family. This story aired on the news in Beaumont Texas channel 6.So now, the only remaining missing person was Marcel Colar. A family member (me) who had driven down to Houston to volunteer at the Houston Astrodome heard that Marcel Colar was still missing. Felicia had found information on the internet indicating that Marcel was at the Austin Convention Center so we decided to go there. We went to registration, medical triage, geriatric services, family reunion tables, you name it and all of those locations, told us that Marcel was never registered. NEVER. A website erroneously reporting Marcel as being at the Austin Convention Center and many well-intentioned Red Cross volunteers at the family reunion areas in the evacuee centers we visited told us he was in Austin based on the same erroneous information we found on the internet at www.katrinasafe.com. While everyone was very friendly and as helpful as possible with what little information they had, our physical search yielded nothing evenremotely definitive. Felicia had to get back to the shelter in Beaumont for fear of being locked out at the 11PM curfew. It was a 600 mile roundtrip across Texas filled with additional pain and trauma to the family many of whom were staying in a shelter in Beaumont, Texas waiting to hear from Marcel. Almost everyone we talked to has told us that there is no official centralized list or database of evacuated medical patients and that we would have to individually search all assisted living, nursing homes, hospitals, long term care facilities in the country to find where the National Guard took Marcel.The family decided that the only way to find Marcel was to launch an internet and media campaign. Felicia’s family built a website and posted information all over the internet asking for people to help make phone calls to all area nursing homes and hospitals. There were a core group of volunteers who called and emailed all over the country and disseminated information all over the place to help find Marcel. The lead volunteers were Lisa Diciccio, Nancy Janousek, Nancy Ferguson and Jenny “C” who were relentless in pursuing leads. In addition, Felicia’s cousin was able to get through to the media and a brief segment aired on Nancy Grace, Ron Thulin aired something on his radio show and an article was published in the San Antonio Lightning Newspaper.The whole time, Felicia and her family were determined to stay in their shelter in Beaumont Texas until they found their “pa pa” Marcel. On September 20th, 2005, Felicia received a call from a doctor at a nursing home in San Antonio Texas indicating that they had someone fitting the description of Marcel Colar in their facility. That same day, the family was told that they needed to evacuate their shelter in Beaumont Texas because Hurricane Rita was coming. So the family left the shelter in Beaumont and it took 22 hours but they finally landed in Dallas. The family was relieved that Marcel was safe, well fed and doing fine in the nursing home.