Twin Sisters Born Premature During Katrina Are Now Thriving (Exclusive)

Although he was only 3 when Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005, Jirron Minor Jr. can still recall certain things from that chaotic time — like how the floodwaters reached the second floor of his New Orleans home.

“I remember the storm hitting,” says Minor, now 23 and living in Oklahoma City. “Just that emotion of feeling scared, feeling like I’m not going to make it.”

It was a tense time for Minor’s family, not just because of Katrina flooding their home but also because Jirron’s newborn twin sisters, Yakierra and Yasmine, weren’t with them.

The girls were born on Aug. 25, 2005 — just four days before the hurricane struck the city — at 34 weeks and were hospitalized at New Orleans’ Touro Infirmary.

Although their mom, Yashica Blackstone, wanted to stay with them, she was discharged on Aug. 28, a day before Katrina’s landfall.

“I thought since the storm was coming maybe they’d let me stay [at the hospital],” Yashica told PEOPLE in 2005, “but the doctor said I had to leave.”

Along with the other preemies, Yakierra and Yasmine ended up being airlifted by helicopter out of Touro Infirmary on Aug. 30, 2005, and taken to Medical City Children’s Hospital in Dallas.

Meanwhile, Minor and his mom were rescued from their flooded home by the Coast Guard. His dad, Jirron Minor Sr., was already in Oklahoma, having arrived just before the hurricane hit.

Following the rescue, Jirron Jr. and Yashica boarded a bus bound for the Astrodome in Houston. At the time, they had no idea where the twins were.

“We had to backtrack, try to figure out where everybody was, who knew who and what hospital they were put in,” he says. 

Fortunately, a friend was able to find the babies’ location through the internet and Yashica finally reunited with the twins on Sept. 4, 2005, at Medical City Children’s.

“It was just a relief,” Yashicka told PEOPLE at the time, noting that the girls were healthy and ready to be released. 

The family, according to Jirron Jr., stayed in Texas for a little while longer before relocating to Oklahoma to be with Jirron Sr. — and it’s where they lived ever since. 

Jirron Jr. says his mom got him into therapy as a child to help him deal with the trauma he endured. Though some of his memories from that time are a blur, other details stick out in his mind, like the water — and the darkness that surrounded them in the immediate aftermath of the storm.

“I remember having to hold the flashlight,” Jirron says. “I remember even seeing the water and stuff. I remember how certain vehicles were sitting outside and parked. I had a toy sitting out in the front yard and it floated  away.”

Something else that’s endured from that time is Jirron’s distaste for a certain canned food item, which is all he ate for some time after the storm. “I hate Vienna sausages to this day,” he says.

Yashica died in January 2020, in Oklahoma, just before the COVID-19 pandemic began. Jirron credits her for getting him through the ordeal of Katrina when he was a child.

“I was by my mom’s side mainly,” he says. “I was glad to even just have her, just somebody there to guide me. Even though she just got done giving birth, she was still there right next to me and willing to help me, just nurture me through that.”

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His twin sisters, Yakierra and Yasmine, are now 20, attending college and “good going, living life,” their older brother says. (Through Jirron, they did not return an interview request.)

The siblings have a little sister, Ya’Lanna, who was born in Oklahoma after the family relocated.

“When we tell her [about Katrina], it’s just like brand new information,” Jirron says.

Which is a good thing, he says: “I’m glad she wasn’t able to experience it like we did.”