This is long but interesting...at least I think it is.
So many things have changed in 10 years. So many things haven't. But the things that have changed are mostly for the good, I think. We learned so much that day. We learned that mother nature is a force to be reckoned with. That she is 100% capable of wiping us out without a second thought. I am sure there will be a zillion posts about this anniversary and although I hate being a "follower" I will jump on the bandwagon, just this once. I never want to relive that day but I think it is important to remember everything that happened that lead us to this point. I am not good with exact time frames but I can give you a round about time of the happenings in my world.
I was 24, living with my long term boyfriend, in a house we bought earlier that year in a suburb of a suburb of a suburb of New Orleans (a bit rural but still a city, we have a Walmart, HELLO!). I had just been laid off from my job and was in the midst of finding somewhere else to work while finishing my Master's Degree. To say my life was upside down is a bit of an understatement. The week of Katrina I had 3 interviews. One was VERY promising, he basically told me I had the job when I was leaving. The entire week and a bit prior I'd been paying little attention to the news and happenings in the world but I made sure to know about the weather. When you are from this area, you watch the weather during hurricane season. I kept hearing about this storm and its potential development, etc etc etc. The City of New Orleans had cried wolf (evacuate) before (Georges & Ivan come to mind) and the storm went somewhere else, so while I took the caution seriously, I wasn't very concerned. When they said LEAVE the last two times, we left, but my gut said it was silly to do so and I was more annoyed than anything (especially sitting in traffic for ELEVEN hours just to get to Lafayette). This storm was different and I told my boyfriend that. I had a VERY bad feeling...I was actually scared. I know people say in hindsight you say this but I swear, before anything happened...I just had the worst feeling in my gut. As the days ticked down, I did what I always do, I prepared for a storm. I bought water, canned food, batteries, candles, lanterns, dog/cat supplies, money, Rxs, etc. We took the boards out of storage and put them in the front of the shed in case we needed to board the windows. We went through the motions as we've all done many, many times before.
I woke up a couple days before (I think) and thought I was hallucinating. This had to be a bad dream. This B**ch was basically a Cat 4, expected to get to a Cat 5 and pointed straight for Louisiana/Mississippi. It took up almost the entire gulf. I sat there gaping at the TV. My boyfriend's work called him in to do emergency prep while I started prepping the house. Thankfully at that time he mainly worked from home so it wasn't too bad. I honestly don't remember when it happened exactly (could have been the same day, could have been the next...its all a blur) but I remember every television in my house going off and announcing an Emergency Statement. Our parish was under a Mandatory Evacuation (1st time in History for this parish). They were expecting a storm surge taller than my house, winds gusting well over 150 mph and driving rains...she was called a "doomsday storm" more than once. The weather forecasters were so somber...they KNEW this was going to be extremely bad. Before long there were police patrols in the streets repeating over and over, "Get out...we will not be able to help you if you stay." We packed what we could, put the important stuff in the attic and prepared to go...north.
I called my mom to make sure she was leaving. She actually fought with me about having no where to go and said my grandparents were staying as well. To say I lost my $hit is an understatement. But none of them would budge. All I kept hearing was "we stayed for Betsy and Camille, this will be fine." Finally my younger cousin called me FREAKING out. She lived more north where she was in school, granted not REALLY north...not even Central LA but still North of us. She told us to go to her place. It was small but we were welcome. Together we convinced (barely convinced) our family to heed the warning and get the F out! I am not ashamed to say I used tears to get our Patriarch to listen. By this point the wind had begun to blow a bit. She was still well offshore but she was so big...it is the most disturbing feeling...you have the sun blazing and a nice breeze on a seemingly BEAUTIFUL summer day but there is nothing but the sound of people packing up their lives. No birds, no animals, no bugs really...nature had left. My two dogs were pacing paths in the grass and my cat was no where to be found, they were clearly nervous. After boarding up the windows on our new home (can I tell you how creepy it is to be inside a boarded house!), we packed up what we could in our cars (including our pets) and headed to our state capitol.
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