Woman Spent Hours Trapped in Attic Before Being Rescued. Miracles Followed, but So Did Tragedies

Lucrece Phillips was still in a body cast after neck and back surgery when Hurricane Katrina hit 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 rescuers could identify them if anything happened.

But Phillips, a 62-year-old poet and hairstylist, remembers telling her daughter, “‘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 loss stayed with them for years. Phillips — one of the survivors featured in the new National Geographic five-part documentary, Hurricane Katrina: Race Against Time — eventually returned home eight years later.

Two decades later, Katrina remains one of the deadliest and most expensive hurricanes in U.S. history.

The storm made landfall in New Orleans on Monday, Aug. 29, 2005. Floodwaters caused the levees that protected the city from Lake Pontchartrain to break. By Wednesday, at least 80% of New Orleans was underwater. More than 1,300 people died, and damages exceeded $100 billion.

The National Geographic series shows footage and stories from officials who led the disaster response, highlighting mistakes and misinformation from the media that cost lives. It also emphasizes the bravery 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 days are still painful.

After leaving the hospital on Aug. 25, she was in a partial body cast. Her family insisted on staying with her in the Eighth Ward as Katrina approached. They even had a hurricane party with beer, candles, dry goods, and batteries.

“That party quickly turned bad,” Phillips recalls. In the series, she says she heard a levee break that Monday. Water rose to the second floor in about 20 minutes, and the house started to move from its foundation.

Despite the fear, Phillips’ faith in God helped her. “We sang for six hours in the attic,” she says.

When daylight revealed the destruction, they were rescued by boat. On that ride, Phillips saw something that haunted her for years: a dead baby floating in the water, with freshly combed hair. The man driving the rescue boat wouldn’t let her take the baby to a nearby bridge. Instead, he pushed it away with a piece of wood.

“We’re worried about the living, not the dead,” he said. Phillips’ therapist later suggested imagining that she had taken the baby to an ambulance on the bridge to help her sleep. “That’s how I finally got over that,” she says.

The family was eventually evacuated to Texas, where the struggle continued. Phillips, who was supposed to wear her cast for six to eight weeks, couldn’t have it removed until February 2006.

Her doctors were gone, and hospitals told her she was a “malpractice suit walking.” One kind nurse finally helped her.

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

A local judge gave Phillips’ family a house to stay in and helped with necessities. But she says most officials treated them poorly. “We were treated like criminals,” she says. Her family had no identification, her daughter faced jail for unpaid tickets, and finding work was difficult.

In 2011, Phillips’ 18-year-old cousin died by suicide because she couldn’t return to New Orleans. “That was heart-wrenching for my family,” Phillips says.

Two years later, despite PTSD from Katrina, Phillips returned to New Orleans.

“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.”

Her love for her family helped her make the move. “I made up my mind,” she says, “and just came on home.”

Her main message for the city is clear: fix New Orleans.

“Make sure the levees are straight. Get our infrastructure back up,” she says. “I want the spotlight on New Orleans. Not to blame anyone. Let’s do better. As a community, come together, let’s do better.”