Chef is stuck on Seattle despite sticky embrace of New Orleans

Bill McKinley isn't going back to New Orleans.

He says this with certainty, as he takes an afternoon break from his job as chef at an Issaquah retirement home, 2,800 miles away from the city he and his family left behind.

Sure, he misses it, he says. There was no other place like it in the world. That sultry blend of Cajun spices, laughter and jazz filling the night air. The heat enveloping you in a sticky embrace. Sometimes when he dreams of his beloved city, the heartache lingers for days.

But a year has passed since Hurricane Katrina. One year since his brother suggested he move out to Washington to be closer. In that time, McKinley's wife, Sue, has found work at a property-management firm. His 17-year-old son, Ian, is thriving in school. And the family is contemplating leaving their Tukwila apartment to move to Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood.

"You have to let go of the past and move forward," says McKinley, 50. "Always move forward."

Even, he says, if the past feels like it was just five minutes ago.

Hurricanes are part of the rhythm of life in the South. And after 25 years of living in New Orleans, McKinley knew the drill when the warnings came: board up the house, batten down the hatches, then take it all off when the storm passed the next day.

Except this time, no one was prepared for what followed.

McKinley and his family heard Katrina was going to be ugly. They watched a CNN reporter urging people to evacuate.

But McKinley couldn't leave.

His job as head chef of Woldenberg Village, a retirement community in the Algiers neighborhood of New Orleans, required him to be on-site during emergencies to make sure the elderly residents got enough food and water. It was too late to start evacuating them at this point, he says.

Given the storms they'd dealt with in the past, McKinley figured he would have to stay there one night, maybe two at the most.

His wife and son drove to a friend's home in Baton Rouge.

"I knew my family would be safe," he says. "And there were 170 residents who needed me."

He and the other staff members spent all day that Sunday moving the residents into a common area where they would spend the night. At midnight, McKinley spread a quilt on the floor and lay down. His 130-pound Rottweiler, Rosie, stayed by his side.

Outside, winds pummeled the building at 140 miles an hour. Two hours of fitful sleep passed. Then McKinley awoke to a loud, cracking sound.

"It was like 'Pow! Pow! Pow!' " The second-floor windows were breaking out one by one. Quiet sobs echoed through the room.

Electricity was gone, and there was no access to television, radio or phones. Toilets overflowed. Rumors ran wild. By morning, McKinley heard one that simply seemed unimaginable: The levees had broken and New Orleans was filling up like a soup bowl.

With no air conditioning, and temperatures rising into the 90s, the heat bore down oppressively.

Four elderly residents died that Monday. McKinley zipped the bodies into black body bags, moving them into a walk-in cooler where he used to spend hours organizing food. There was nowhere else to put them.

As the city slipped further into chaos, he witnessed looters breaking into stores, setting fires in their wake. He heard gunshots ricochet through the air. In three days, his lifelong notions of human dignity had disintegrated before him.

"The air reeked of sewage and death," he says.

Airlifts and rescues were clearing out the city. Three days after the hurricane hit, seven buses came to the retirement home to evacuate everyone to Houston.

But McKinley stayed behind. Desperate to join his family in Baton Rouge, he drove out of New Orleans, leaving behind his own damaged house and an empty, broken city.

McKinley knows he's one of the lucky ones.

His food-service company, Sodexho, found him a job at Providence Marianwood in Issaquah shortly after he moved to Washington. He and his family are adapting well.

"What's not to like about Seattle?" he says. "It's clean, the people are nice, the weather is great. Trust me, it does not rain here, compared to Louisiana. It drizzles. It does not rain."

Still, the memories get to him. He mourns the death of the city that lured him there as a young chef from the East Coast, a place so intoxicating, you could inhale all flavors of food in the air if you just breathed deeply enough.

Now when the nostalgia hits, McKinley knows what to do.

Throw on a Wynton Marsalis record. Fry up some catfish. And in an instant, he's back on the streets of New Orleans, stirring up jambalaya in the French Quarter.

Some places, he says, you just don't leave.

Sonia Krishnan: 206-515-5546