After Katrina, O.C. Has the Perfect Climate

But somewhere between Hurricane Katrina and refuge in Southern California last month, it became apparent: This would be a one-way trip.

"Many people left thinking they would return in a month," said Tran, who left Aug. 28, a day before the hurricane hit New Orleans, her hometown. But for her and her teenage son, Kenny Dang, there's no going back, at least for now.

They are among an estimated 9,000 hurricane victims who have made their way to Southern California on their own, lured not by a government program but by family; friends; a warm, dry climate; jobs; and, yes, even Disneyland. Many are enrolling their youngsters in public schools and plan to stay awhile.

Tran, 48, has no home left in New Orleans, her at-home sewing business is a shambles and she knows many of the almost 1,000 newcomers around her in Orange County are in the same shape. "Like me and my son, they can't come back. I feel so bad, so sad."

And like Tran, most of the new arrivals are Vietnamese, many returning to friends and families in a place that was a major portal to the United States after the fall of Saigon in 1975.

Even though Tran has been here before, she and other new arrivals say they often find Southern California's freeways bewildering, its shopping malls gigantic and rents sky high.

But they say they like the familiarity of dozens of Vietnamese restaurants and shops in Little Saigon, home to the largest population of Vietnamese outside of Vietnam.

For Phillip Dominick, 60, who drove from New Orleans with his wife and son, it wasn't hard getting used to packed malls and more people here.

"It's not too many people, it's too many freeways," Dominick said.

"In Louisiana, I could daydream and still find my exit. Here, you get off at the wrong exit, make a wrong turn and you find you don't have one interstate, but you got 15 more."

Dominick left New Orleans with his wife, Marva, their son, Phillip Dominick Jr., 22, and Sasha, their 85-pound Rottweiler.

They initially thought they would be away from home two days. But when a nearby levee broke, their home flooded and he decided to head west "as far as I could go."

Dominick praised the Red Cross, which gave the family aid, found them a hotel that accepts dogs and helped his son, a senior at the University of New Orleans, send transcripts to California schools.