Natural and physical terror. Death and destruction. Hell on earth.

Then, finally, rebirth, renewal and release.

Nine years ago, Kendrick Lewis was caught in the storm. During the days leading up to Hurricane Katrina, he was a 17-year-old high school football star, eyeing college ball at Mississippi and a future life in the NFL. During the horror that followed, Lewis was like so many others left in Katrina's wake: lost, alone and afraid.

Almost a decade later, Lewis is a starting free safety set to make his Texans debut Sunday, during the team's 2014 season opener against the Washington Redskins at NRG Stadium. The 6-foot, 198-pound Lewis also is a Katrina evacuee, as are many of his family members and more than 1 million people who were displaced during the costliest hurricane and most catastrophic natural disaster in U.S. history.

When the New Orleans-born Lewis rediscovered his family in the aftermath of a Category 5 storm that claimed more than 1,800 lives - via a surreal scene shown live on national television - a shaken boy reconnected with those he thought lost in Houston, near the Eighth Wonder of the World.

Come Sunday, Lewis will strap on No. 21, the hope and expectations of a new Texans season, and the pride of his stronger than ever Crescent City-to-Bayou City connection, a short distance from where his young life restabilized near the Astrodome and worlds away from the terror and destruction that briefly became all he knew.

More Information Texans update Today: Washington at NRG Stadium, noon. TV/radio: Fox; 610 AM, 100.3 FM and 1180 AM (Spanish). The Lewis file Position: Free safety. Year: 5th. Ht./wt.: 6-0, 198. 2013: 16 games (15 starts), one interception, 56 tackles (46 solo), four passes deflected, two quarterback hits, three tackles for loss with Kansas City. Acquired: Signed with Texans as free agent March 21. College: Mississippi (No. 136 overall pick in fifth round of 2010 NFL draft). Hometown: New Orleans.

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"We've always been a close-knit family," said Lewis, 26, whose mother and cousin are among Katrina-affected family members now calling Houston home. "But in those tough times and those situations, our true family had to pull together for each other. That's what made us even stronger."

First-year coach Bill O'Brien's Texans are entering their 2014 campaign searching for a rebirth. Lewis already found his in Houston.

But first he had to find his family.

Flashlight fatality

A season-opening, senior-year high school football game never played.

The best, prettiest day of the summer.

A vow to still attend church, while a deceptively deadly storm moved closer and closer.

This is what Lewis' family remembers about the hours leading up to Katrina's landfall on Aug. 29, 2005, and the days that followed.

After the storm hit and levees failed, eventually flooding New Orleans and creating unprecedented havoc in a city long used to hurricanes, Lewis' family split apart across the Southeast.

It would take them months to reconnect and years to readjust. In some ways, Katrina still feels new nine years later.

"It's nothing that you really can forget, you know what I'm saying?" said Detrell Wright, who finished middle school in Houston and is Lewis' cousin. "The small decisions that we made, it was like you could be talking to me now or you couldn't be talking to me now."

Before the flood, Lewis' mother, Clarrissa, left New Orleans and traveled to Gainesville, Ga., an hour from Atlanta. Lewis was living with an uncle pre-Katrina, which provided Lewis with an address that allowed him to play high school ball at O. Perry Walker. Packing enough food for what he believed would be a brief trip with an imminent return to New Orleans, Lewis and his uncle headed to Houston.

The normal five-hour drive took 16. Roadside gas was hard to find. They were simple inconveniences compared to the across-the-South journey that followed, with Lewis playing his senior season of football in Gainesville, then re-establishing himself in New Orleans in time for graduation.

While Lewis and his mother found safety in nearby states, his grandmother, Jane, a brother-like cousin and a large collection of family members remained in New Orleans during Katrina, the flooding and the chaos.

Stuck near the heart of the city off Canal Street and Claiborne Avenue - just off Interstate 10 and about a mile from the Superdome - Jane and Wright endured life-altering situations in a major American city that are almost unthinkable nearly a decade removed from the reality.

"I did see a lot of dead people," Wright said. "It was rough. It was real rough. I seen somebody get killed over a flashlight."

The real-life horror movie, according to Jane, Wright and Lewis:

A moldy, overcrowded, outdated hotel that kept losing power and caught fire before Katrina even hit. Rising floodwaters and no direction on how to safely escape the city. Salvaged food from an open-to-all-takers grocery store that was cooked on a hot plate; a wine shelf turned into a "boat" to carry the food and keep it dry. A surreal, sleepless night on I-10, with 18-wheelers blowing by as Lewis' grandmother, cousin and family members tried to find refuge in a driving lane. A milk truck that became a miracle, with keys still in the ignition, air conditioning to cool off New Orleans' saturated September heat and an eventual pathway out of disaster.

"It was terrible, because they was shooting and they was doing everything," Jane said. "And in the hotel where we was, they was raping people. So we was standing God over our children and everything."

For days, disrupted telephone service left Lewis and his mother painfully wondering what had happened to the family members who stayed behind.

Salvation came through the TV.

Reunited at last

Before Katrina, this was the plan: Lewis to Houston, his mother to Gainesville, then a family reconnection in New Orleans once evacuees were told they could safely return home.

After Katrina, Lewis could only watch and wait.

Temporarily living with his uncle at a friend's house in Houston near what was then Reliant Stadium, Lewis stared at a television broadcasting CNN.

While a reporter spoke, background images were shown. Lewis recognized a grocery store. Then a playground. Then there were Greyhound buses and words such as Houston and the Astrodome.

"I'm just hoping and praying … that I see my family members get on one of those buses, because they're already saying these buses are going to be headed to Houston," Lewis said.

Bodies and faces began to flicker on the screen. Lewis' teenage eyes captured Jane and other family members. No one was crying. No one looked like anyone close to them had recently died. But Lewis knew he was guessing and reaching with nothing close to being certain.

He and his mother kept in contact since the two parted ways before Katrina, so Houston was connected with Gainesville.

"He had a depression in his voice," Clarrissa said. "He said, 'Yeah, I'm all right, momma.' I said, 'No, you're not all right Kendrick. I can hear it in your voice.' "

Finally, a call days in the making came through.

Rising floodwaters, looting, salvaged food and the top of I-10 had been left behind. Lewis' grandmother and cousin, among others, were on their way to the Astrodome as Katrina evacuees. Before Lewis arrived, his family was taken in by Houstonians offering a hand, bringing humanity to a disaster that bridged two major cities about 350 miles apart.

"I just shed my tears and said, 'Thank God. Thank God for allowing my family to make it out of that situation,' " Lewis said. "And I was just praying for the people of New Orleans. It was just a big relief that my family was OK."

Nine years after Katrina, Lewis credits his grandmother with keeping the family together and finding a way out of New Orleans. Jane made Houston home until 2008, then returned to the city she once escaped.

"The only good thing that came through everything was my grandson," Jane said. "God made a way for him."

So close and yet so far

A perfectly blue summer sky. Soft but crisp white clouds. Open space. Lewis stands beneath it all.

Towering on his left, NRG Stadium, his new NFL home. Quietly on his right, the discarded Astrodome.

Two connected worlds, a matter of yards apart but nine years removed from Katrina, Greyhound buses, evacuees, death and destruction.

Lewis found his lost family here. Now, he has become a Texan. As unimaginable as late August and early September 2005 were, so is the arc of Lewis' football life.

New Orleans is close enough to visit and important enough to never forget. Katrina's ghost remains but has never been farther away. Houston holds him now.

"It's my home away from home," Lewis said. "New Orleans is always my home, where I was born and raised. But Houston is definitely my second home."