Countdown to 30: Day 13

Hurricane Katrina is the natural disaster that has affected me the most in my life to this point. There is no way that I can fit all of Katrina in a single post, so it will probably take me several.

At the end of August 2005, I was excited because I finally had a job and I was moving to the place I love - Texarkana! I bought a new car to start building the necessary credit to own a home and to have a more up-to-date car. I was staying with Ms. Brenda because I had signed a lease on an apartment, but it was not ready yet. I was preparing to start the new job the first of September. I knew that there was a storm brewing in the Gulf that had the potential of hitting New Orleans, and it looked like a big one.

On Saturday, I could not help but watch the weather coverage off and on. The most encouraging thing seemed to be that the governor of Louisiana was saying that it looked like there would not be a need to evacuate. Whew! It can't be that bad if there is no need for evacuation, right? When I woke up the next morning, the whole story had changed. Category 5. Headed straight to New Orleans. Evacuate now. It seemed as if things had changed overnight. Fortunately, I was staying with Ms. Brenda. Ms. Brenda worked for years with the Red Cross. She was able to provide me with a ton of advice that helped with communication over the next few days. She adviced me to obtain several contact numbers for anyone I talked with, to keep a notepad with the numbers handy anytime I talked to anyone, and to keep trying numbers until there was a response. On Sunday I started calling everyone I had numbers for and writing down every number anyone would give me.

On Sunday night I could only wait to see if the worst would happen. I did not sleep much as I watched the storm get closer and closer to New Orleans. At some point on Monday it was mostly passed and the worse was over. The eye hit Mississippi instead of New Orleans, and New Orleans was fortunate enough to get the west side of the storm. At least those were all thoughts I had on Monday.