"Katrina kicked off troubled souls' odyssey"

[bloom]

Katrina kicked off troubled souls' odyssey

By JOSEPH B. VERRENGIA
AP Science Writer


HOUSTON (AP) -- They're out there. The shooters, the choppers, the looters, the lines, the foul water and the bodies. Especially the bodies. "But we're in here," says Victor Fruge.

Others - hundreds of thousands of them - had also escaped from New Orleans. But few could match the extraordinary, even miraculous odyssey of Fruge and his comrades - 16 mentally ill men and recovering addicts, cast out of their group home, Abstract House, by the storm.

For a week the men stuck together through Hurricane Katrina and its rising waters, following a survival instinct like a candle in the dark and gamely caring for each other as they traveled unsupervised for nearly 500 miles. They arrived at dawn in Houston, a sprawling and unfamiliar city among the thousands of hurricane refugees who have made the exodus to Texas, but without a friend in sight.

Along the way they ate and slept in at least four different shelters and caught rides on four different means of transport, always clutching the psychotropic medications that keep their imaginary devils at arm's length while the real world around them sunk into a deeper hell.<much more>

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[EFerrari]

1. bloom, this is an amazng story.

I sent it to my whole network.

WhatEver was looking after these guys, I need THAT. I honor THAT.

:hi: