Pushed out by Hurricane Katrina, Rochelle James’ parents, three sisters, a brother and his wife, two nephews and her father’s ex-wife are now in a hotel in Greenville, Miss.

“My family evacuated Sunday morning before the hurricane,” said James, 23, a Kansas University graduate student who grew up in New Orleans and whose family’s home is there.

“Our house is three blocks from Lake Pontchartrain,” she said. “My high school was on the lake.”

No one knows for sure, but James and her parents assume the family home is under water.

“To think otherwise would be unrealistic,” she said. “I talked to my mom an hour ago. They’re saying there are 40,000 homes under water.”

James said her family had no place to go but couldn’t stay where they were.

“It’s not that they can’t stay where they are, it’s that they can’t afford it,” she said. “People are being told they won’t be able to go back for a couple months.”

Rochelle James' parents and other relatives are in a hotel in Greenville, Miss. Her family fled New Orleans Sunday morning before the hurricane, said James, a 23-year-old graduate student at Kansas University. The family is assuming their house is destroyed.

James said she was uncertain where her family would go or what they would do now.

“I don’t know that they would come here,” she said. “If they all had a place to stay and it was free, they wouldn’t have to work, they could get by. But if it’s not free, they’ll have to go where they could get jobs.”

James said her parents – her father is a retired teacher, her mother is a high school guidance counselor – are hoping to find accommodations as close as possible to New Orleans.

“They want to get back to fix up the house, but they can’t stay there,” she said, “because there aren’t any utilities, so they’ll have to drive back and forth. With travel costs being so high, it would make sense to be down there rather than up here.”

Offers of assistance may be relayed to James via e-mail – rljames @ku.edu – or by calling the KU Campus Ministry Office at First United Methodist Church, 841-7500.

“If they come here, they would need things like clothes and dishes,” James said, noting that like most evacuees, her family had expected to be able to return home after two or three days.

“When people evacuated,” she said, “they didn’t realize they wouldn’t be able to come back, so they packed like they were going on vacation for two or three days.”

James said the family hasn’t heard from a sister and brother-in-law since Monday evening.

“It was after the hurricane hit,” she said. “He (the brother-in-law) said there was water in the den – their house is up off the street, it’s a two-story with an attic.”

Another brother-in-law, she said, is a New Orleans policeman.

“He checked reports on the street my sister’s house is on; he said there’s seven feet of water on it.”

So far, James said, she’s assuming no one in her family died in the hurricane or its aftermath.

“I do ask that people pray for my family,” she said.