FAIRFIELD – Mike Stanford armed himself with a .45-caliber handgun and rode his bicycle through the filthy flooded streets of New Orleans last week before finding safety 175 miles away and flying to Maine.

Stanford, who graduated from Lawrence High School in 2003, worked as a cook at the Royal Sonesta Hotel on Bourbon Street. He had studied cooking at the French Culinary Institute in New York City and had lived in New Orleans since January.

After Hurricane Katrina hit, New Orleans turned into a city of filth, death, looters and lawlessness, Stanford, 21, told a class at Lawrence High on Tuesday.

By last Wednesday, as the nation got its first good look at the devastation across the region and the sewers backed up into the city streets, Stanford decided to pack up and get out.

He strapped on a backpack and took up his handgun, and he and a friend pedaled their bikes through sewage-soiled water 2 feet deep in places. He soon lost track of his friend and continued alone toward the interstate in 100-degree heat.

He rode until the bike would go no farther, then hitched a ride north toward Memphis, Tenn. “I told one guy I’d pay him $100 to take me anywhere but here,” Stanford recalled. “It was hell on earth.”

When cellular phone service was restored outside of Jackson, Miss., he got out of the car and got rid of the gun, he said. He called his parents, Carrington and Valerie Stanford of Clinton, and they booked him a flight home.

He landed Thursday in Manchester, N.H., where his parents were waiting.

“I think I had a lot of post-traumatic stress disorder,” he said. “I had a lot of trauma; the night I got back I didn’t sleep at all.”

Stanford said he won’t forget the hurricane. He and his roommate were in their first-floor apartment when it hit, sending water into the building and ripping the roof off.

The day after, the streets were like a war zone, he said.

“[Last] Tuesday night, I saw a couple of looters right across the street – cops shot three looters,” he said. “There was absolutely no law. They were looting gun shops and shot at helicopters.”

Stanford said he plans to head to Dallas in a couple of months to get a job.