A 23-year-old is back in the calm of Baildon after enduring days in the squalor of flood-hit New Orleans.

Graduate Claire Watkins endured heat, stench and tension while crammed with up to 25,000 refugees in the city's Superdome where she fled with thousands of others after Hurricane Katrina struck the city.

She eventually escaped to a nearby medical centre with a group of tourists in a pizza van.

And then on Thursday evening got to a hotel in Dallas where the first thing she did was shower.

"It was the best shower I'd ever had," she said. "We were rank. We didn't know how dirty we were because everywhere stank.

"The place was absolutely filthy. The toilets were terrible."

Claire spoke to the Telegraph & Argus about her nightmare ordeal within hours of her return home yesterday.

As looting, rapes and shootings broke out on the city streets, Claire and her friends were thankful they were in the relative safety of the dome.

But it was still a tense time and there were occasions when they felt threatened.

"We tried to ignore the stories about what was happening. There were so many rumours which we didn't want to believe.

"The time we felt most intimidated was when we went to the toilets. We had to use a walkway and I think some people resented us.

"The atmosphere was getting more threatening as the days went by and it was a good job we got out to the medical centre when we did."

There were reports of problems in the queues - people pushing and screaming, she said.

"I don't know how we would have coped if we had had to face that," said Claire who arrived in New Orleans while travelling on her gap year.

Claire, a graduate in sociology at John Moores University, Liverpool, survived on army rations handed out by the military.

She was eventually evacuated to a medical centre where she helped care for a group of elderly patients, before being moved on to Dallas

And it was on her way to the hotel in Dallas that another horror was to come.

The bus in front, evacuating local people, suddenly veered off the road and turned over.

"We were on our way to civilisation and this happened. That was the first time I lost it. I was very upset.

"These people had endured so much then this happened. I think someone was killed.

"I felt very guilty. We were off home to see our families but the people there had lost everything. They had nowhere to go to. They were desperate."

Claire's mum Nicola Watkins said: "I was very worried and tense. But she is very competent and good at looking after herself. I just didn't watch the news."

She eventually made contact with her daughter by telephone in Dallas.

Claire, who was travelling with her 23-year-old friend Marisa Haigh from Guildford, is urging people to give generously to the relief agencies, especially the Red Cross.

She is a former student of Beckfoot School, Bingley.