I left New Orleans the Monday before the storm to visit my brother in Chicago for a few days. At the time of my departure I had no idea Hurricane Katrina existed so I only packed a week\'s worth of clothes. I had a great time in Chicago, completely oblivious to the impending storm. Saturday morning I woke up packed and ready to go. As I was milling around, preparing for my departure, my brother comes in the room and says, \"You have a little change in your plans.\"\r\n\"Oh yeah?� I responded, thinking that he was joking around.\r\n� Yeah, Its called Hurricane Katrina and it may hit New Orleans by the end of the weekend.�\r\nI went into his bedroom to watch the news. When I saw the radar image of the storm, I knew the city was in a lot of trouble. The hurricane was close to the size of the gulf. I went down to Kentucky that day to see my parents and friends, however for the next three days I sat in front of the TV with a bottle of bourbon watching the coverage on the weather channel and CNN. What an emotional rollercoaster. As the storm approached, I could not stop thinking about an environmental studies class I took on the Mississippi River Basin. Much of the class was centered on the disaster prone geography of New Orleans and South Louisiana. One of the many guest lecturers was a representative of the Army Corps. of Engineers. When asked what he would do in the occurrence of a category 4 or higher storm, he responded, �I would get the hell out. The city�s levees are not built to withstand a storm of that size. In fact, there is a warehouse in New Orleans with 10,000 body bags in cause we are hit by a �storm of the century.��\r\nAt the end of the day, on August 29, I breathed a sigh of relief, because I thought that the city had dodged the bullet. My optimistic illusions came crashing down as I heard the reports that the levees had broke and the city was filling up with water. A few days went by and the situation deteriorated, so I knew there was no way New Orleans would be inhabitable anytime soon.\r\nI went to Miami to attend the University of Miami for a semester. I only had my one bag of belongings that I had brought to Chicago. What a stupid idea. I went from living in New Orleans, which had just been hit by the most damaging hurricane in history to Miami, one of the most hurricane prone cities in America. I sat through Rita, which only caused me to lose power for a few days. To a certain degree, this lulled me into a false sense of security. Then I sat through Wilma, which I did not really prepare for. This was the first large hurricane that I had really witnessed. I got up and went outside to watch the storm�s wrath and drove around to survey the damage the next day, which was much worse then I had thought. My miniscule monetary funds, sparse sandwich meat and bottled water only lasted a few days before I was fleeing South Florida with a half tank of gas (I only made it by pleading with the manager of a gas station for gas). I came back a week and a half later and still did not have power at my house in South Miami for another week and a half.\r\nI came back to New Orleans in January and found that my apartment on Coliseum and General Pershing was destroyed, however, not from the flooding. Sections of the roof were torn off so it could rain into the apartment above mine. The water collected and destroyed that apartment�s floor, my ceiling. When I walked into the apartment, it looked like a bad horror movie, as if the ceiling was a mangled mouth of sheet rock and wood plank teeth reaching down to swallow me. Even more scary was trying to find a decent apartment for a decent price in post-Katrina New Orleans, and believe me, it took 2 months, 3 apartments, and numerous friends� couches to get where I am today.\r\n