In John Jackson’s hometown of New Orleans, living with the threat of hurricanes had always meant putting your faith in a tenuous trust.

As long as the levees held, neighbors reminded one another, everything would be all right.

Jackson, who now lives in Newport, tried to keep that in mind last Sunday night when he called his sister, Jennifer, in New Orleans to ask about the family there as Hurricane Katrina approached.

“At that time, she told me she was just going to batten down the hatches and ride it out,” Jackson said. “I figured the levees would hold, and that the family would be OK.”

That was the last he heard from his sister, who is married and has a 2-year-old daughter. As of Friday, Jackson also still had no idea of the fate of his mother, who was with Jennifer when the storm struck, or any of the other members of his large family, who chose, as did 50,000 to 100,000 other residents, to stay in New Orleans. His father – Jackson’s parents are divorced – finally called Wednesday to say he had fled the city Sunday and was safe in Tennessee. Jackson’s other sister, Sarah, who was speaking to Jennifer early Monday morning when the phone line went dead, escaped to Texas on Sunday. It was there she learned that the house she’d left behind in the city’s St. Bernard area was submerged in the floodwaters. Jennifer’s house was destroyed by wind and now is also underwater.

“All I can do now is hope for the best,” Jackson said.

But that becomes increasingly difficult, he admitted, as the situation in New Orleans grows more desperate, chaotic and lawless every day. His wife, Lura, who grew up in Eastport and met Jackson when she was a student at Tulane University in New Orleans four years ago, said that following the dire news from so far away was the most difficult part.

“It’s been really overwhelming to pick up the Bangor Daily and see the front-page pictures of the floods and destruction,” she said. “Our people are down there, but we don’t know where. We heard that the mayor ordered 10,000 body bags, and that there’s looting going on everywhere, and that people won’t be able to go back to their houses for months. We’re trying to focus on normal things but it’s just so hard.”

With no information to go on, Jackson presumes that his mother, sister and the rest of the family escaped the flooded neighborhood and took shelter in a hospital or in the storm-damaged Superdome, where conditions rapidly became so deplorable that officials had to order its evacuation.

“At this point, I really can’t imagine they’re on a roof somewhere,” said Jackson, who works at Microdyne in Old Town. “I don’t know what to think.”

The couple has spent a lot of time on the Web site www.nola.com/forums/imok/, which allows people to share messages regarding the whereabouts of storm victims who’ve been located and to post pleas for assistance in finding those who have not been heard from yet. When Lura checked the site Thursday night, it listed the names of more than 7,000 missing people. Meanwhile, Jackson’s emotions fluctuate between confidence that he’ll hear soon from his family, despair over all they’ve lost, and frustration that he is powerless to do anything more than watch from a distance as the crisis in his hometown unfolds.

“I’m prepared for the worst but I’m expecting the best,” he said. “We’re a family of survivors.”