I was born in San Pedro Sula, Honduras September 23, 1979. My father’s family moved to New Orleans, Louisiana because there are more opportunities in the United States. In June 20, 1981, I became a legal U.S. resident at which time my father moved my mother and I from Honduras into a small apartment near the New Orleans International airport. I’ve been proud to call New Orleans home ever since even though I was raised in Metairie and mostly Kenner, which lie just outside the city of New Orleans. I married in the fall of 2004 and then my husband and I moved to Lafitte Village at the University of New Orleans. \r\nOn Thursday August 25, 2005, a category 1 hurricane named Katrina slammed into southern Florida leaving more than 1 million without power and killing 9 people. My husband carefully watched the news coverage of Katrina and he said that if it looks like it is coming to New Orleans then we are going to evacuate. He kept telling me that there was a chance that we would have to evacuate even though every body was saying that it was not going to hit us. Then, on Saturday August 27th, the storm made that fateful turn towards New Orleans and we evacuated.\r\nWe have always been ready to evacuate at any sign of a hurricane coming our way especially since I have grown up with the great fear of a hurricane hitting New Orleans and then drowning the city. A storm that was fresh on ours minds was tropical storm Cindy, which hit Louisiana on July 6, 2005 and left parts of New Orleans without power for several days. I definitely did not want to ride out a hurricane knowing that power outages would be worse this time than the outages were from Cindy. Another reason we always evacuate is that every New Orleans native has heard the possible stories about floodwaters submerging New Orleans for months if ever hit by a category three hurricane because the city lies below sea level. The New Orleans is as a bowl idea had become somewhat of an imaginary and scary story that had been told for years. What happened on August 29, 2005 and the days following was nowhere near, what I had ever imagined would happen.\r\nBefore I went to bed on Friday August 26, I remember planning what errands I was going to run before work the next day. My husband woke me up that Saturday around 10:00 am to say that he was, almost positive that the hurricane was coming our way and that it was going to be a category 5. I responded with, “But what about work tonight? Plus I have a double tomorrow.” It did not take long for him to convince me not to worry about missing work. I figured we were going on another mini-vacation like the one to California that we had just gotten back from on August 9. The first thing I did was call my mom to tell her what was going on and that we were leaving but all I got was her voicemail. \r\nWe had to pack, hurricane proof the apartment and get gas right away because we needed to hit the road early in order to beat the traffic that accompanies every evacuation. I left our apartment at around 11 am that day to fill up my gas tank only to find a long line of other people who decided to do the same at the shell on Paris and Robert E. Lee. I remember having to wait for about 30 minutes or so before I could pull up to fill my tank. There was a man there that started to ask me if I knew what was going on because he had just gotten back from playing golf only to find all the gas stations filled with people getting gas. I remember telling him that I was there to fill my tank because I was going to evacuate from the hurricane that was probably headed our way. I left the Shell, headed back to my apartment to finish helping my husband move the furniture and put our pictures in waterproof containers. I found myself thinking of so many things that I wanted to pack and I was grabbing everything that I could possibly fit in three duffle bags. Granted, I always pack a lot anyway, but something about that day made me pack even more. My husband had to remind me that I was not packing for anything special and that it was time to go since I was taking so long to pack. I guess I took a little longer packing this time because I sensed I was not going to be back for a long time. Before we left the apartment, I decided to give my mom another call to tell her that we were headed out the door and that she needed to get my sisters as well as herself packed so that we could all leave at once. I was upset to find out that she was out enjoying her day as if nothing was going to happen. She did not believe that the hurricane was coming our way. My mom simply remarked that I needed to calm down because she claimed to have watched the news and that it was going to Mississippi anyway. I pleaded with her to start hurricane proofing her house and to start packing because unlike her, we had been watching the news that morning and according to them, it was coming our way. We told her that we were not going to wait for a mandatory evacuation just to be caught in tons of traffic and I urged that she do the same. She kept giving me all these excuses as to why she could not start preparing right away. Then she told me how she was going to talk about evacuating with her boyfriend who was still at work, before she made any decisions. My mom would not listen to me! She seriously thought I was overreacting. I told her that the projected path had changed over night and that she needed to go home to listen to the current broadcasts. I started to feel as if she did not believe me for some reason. Then my 16-year-old sister got mad at me for telling her to pack because we were leaving. I remember hearing her yell about how it was not coming our way. I felt like I was in the twilight zone! I was just trying to help my family but they were acting as if I was crazy. The only one to listen was my 14-year-old sister that wanted to leave with me but she was not packed and my husband and I were committed to getting on the road before the traffic became unbearable. \r\nI cannot explain exactly why I felt so strongly about everyone leaving that day. All I knew was that it was my first hurricane season living outside my mom’s house. I guess I felt uncomfortable with the fact that I was getting ready to leave without them unlike every other year. Again, we did not want to wait around and risk being caught in traffic. All we knew was that we had to get out of there and quick. I started to call my mom from the moment I woke up and continued to do so every so often up until noon to make sure she was taking this hurricane seriously. I can understand why she actually believed it would not come our way because every year we pack and prepare everything to evacuate and nothing ever happens. Still I wanted to go to her house to help her board up the windows and to push her on getting a move on. The problem was that my mom wasn’t even home and my husband reminded me about the last time we helped her hurricane proof the house and how she ended up sweeping the sidewalk instead of helping! Besides, we trusted that her boyfriend would be there to help her once they decided it was time to go. The last thing my husband and I wanted was to be caught in bumper-to-bumper traffic. So we were determined to leave at that time no matter what. We left that day at around noon but not before stopping at Best Buy so that I could drop my car off in the parking lot that is on Best Buy’s roof. I was afraid my car would flood at the University and there was no sense in taking both of our cars.\r\nIt was a very smooth stress-free ride with minimal traffic. We listened to 870 AM for as far as we could before it became fuzzy because we were out of range. I remember thinking how informative they were. I even called my sisters to tell them to put on 870 AM and that they would hear everything important they needed to hear about the hurricane. \r\nWe didn’t know where we were headed to at first. All we knew was that we needed to get far away from Louisiana and away from the traffic that would soon start. I remembered that my mom was making plans on going to Dallas, Texas for Labor Day weekend and that she had asked us to come. For this reason, my husband and I thought it would be perfect to go there for a few days. We were thinking until Wednesday or Thursday at the most. I hoped that going to Dallas would also be a good way of convincing my mom to leave since she planned to go there anyway. Therefore, why not get there a weekend earlier. I called her once more while on our long nine-hour trip to let her know that we were headed to Dallas and to make sure that she was getting her things together to leave. At some point in our conversation, I mentioned to her what Mayor Nagin had said about there not being enough body bags for everyone. I hoped that maybe that would get her out of there. I was relieved to find out that she had talked to a few of her friends who were leaving and luckily, that made her realize that she should leave too. She told me she had decided that they would leave that night. After I hung up with her, I was relieved. I also called my work to let them know that I had evacuated. We then called the Hampton Inn & Suites in Mesquite, Texas (right outside of Dallas) to make a 3 day room reservation. We arrived in Mesquite at a little past nine o’clock pm. We found out later that night that my mother-in law had evacuated from Chalmette (thankfully) and that she and my brother-in law were on their way to Mesquite as well. I also found out that my mom hadn’t left that night as she had said she would. She said she would be leaving early Sunday morning instead. I called her at 6:00 am on Sunday to give her a wake up call. Of course, she didn’t leave until around noon that day. When they finally left, my family was stuck in horrendous traffic for hours. They weren’t able to make it into Texas until past 5 am Monday morning. That is about 17 hours. I made a few more phone calls on Sunday and felt such relief knowing that many of my friends had left the city but I was most relieved knowing that my family was going to be safe. My husband and I were so glad that we left when we did because we avoided all of that unnecessary traffic by deciding to leave before the mandatory evacuation announcement. \r\nWe spent the next few days glued to the different news channels. All we could do was be on the outside looking in, through television, on some of the chaos overtaking our city. Monday was the scariest day of them all because we didn’t know what to expect. It seemed that New Orleans had dodged the major bite of the storm because it was on the west side of the huge and powerful hurricane. Then on Tuesday August 30, the water started rising and it was announced that certain parts of the levees had serious leaks. In the days that followed, I felt as if my life had been sucked out of me. Everything that was going on was unbelievable from the flooding to the looting and the starving people in the Superdome and Convention center. I’ll never forget the image that broke my heart and caused me to break down in tears. The television image was one of an old white woman who seemed to have gotten very ill in the wait for help. I’m sure her fragile body couldn’t withstand the lack of food and water but she was still alive. The old woman was in front of; I think the superdome in a shopping cart or something. A young African American girl pushed the woman towards the news crew running very fast. I wasn’t sure what this young girl was trying to do by pushing the old woman in a shopping basket like that. It seemed to me as if she was trying to get someone to help her though. The thin little old woman was in her nightgown looking so alone and I felt so sorry for her. She reminded me of my 79-year-old grandma so I just couldn’t help but cry. I wonder if the old woman survived or could she have been the one the news channels kept showing dead in a wheel chair pushed off to the side with a blanket over her. I couldn’t believe that all of those people were stranded for days with nothing.\r\nOur city was falling apart and the feeling of being in a strange city hundreds of miles away, waiting helplessly while watching it fall apart was indescribable. I started to think back to the beginning and I began to feel guilty about just taking off without waiting for my mom. Anything could have happened if for some reason she wouldn’t have been able to get out, especially because of the flooding in Kenner.\r\nI started to become grateful for so many things that helped me look on the bright side of our situation. I didn’t want to be in Texas anymore but I was grateful that I hadn’t lost my life or anyone close to me as many others had. I was grateful because we were able to get help from FEMA, the Red Cross and we were able to sleep in a nice hotel room rather than in a shelter. We didn’t know what our plans were; all we knew was that we weren’t able to go home. We made so many different plans that changed daily because we were like loose leaves floating up in the air. We didn’t know anything. However, who knew? We left Mesquite for like 2 days and went to Arkansas to get our minds off things. We thought going into the countryside to get away from where the storm had brought us would help us clear our minds as well as help ease some family tensions that were building up between us. \r\nMy husband, two sisters, grandma and I returned from Arkansas to Mesquite only to have to stay at an apartment that belonged to my mother’s boyfriend brother. We were extremely uncomfortable and felt like we were such a bother that after only one day we headed out to find out about FEMA housing. It was our lucky day. When we arrived at the Housing authority of Plano, Texas, we found out that Red Cross was going to be paying for the hotel rooms of Katrina victims. We immediately called the Hampton Inn & Suites, where we were in the beginning, and got two rooms there. \r\nShortly after our move back to the hotel we made a trip back to New Orleans only to find my mom’s house covered in mold. Many of her things were still wet so we had to throw almost everything away. For 2 days, I worked as I have never worked in my entire life helping gut the house as well as removing moldy wet furniture. The heat and the smell of the mold were unbearable. We were afraid of what that mold could do to our health so we went out and bought some masks, boots, and painter suits to protect our health. We planned to go back for a 3rd day to finish the garage but Hurricane Rita forced us back into Mesquite a few days early. We returned to New Orleans a second time the weekend of October 15th to take care of some things in Kenner. We headed back home to our hotel on Monday October 17th we made it in late that evening. We’ve been at the Hampton Inn & Suites of Mesquite ever since. \r\nMy mom has realized how things have changed in all of the affected cities by seeing it and talking to people that are living there now. It is especially hard to find an apartment anywhere near Kenner, so with that she has decided to stay in Mesquite until May in order to let my sisters’ finish the school year while her house is being repaired. My husband and I plan to stay here in Mesquite until the University of New Orleans reopens in January. The only damage our apartment at the University of New Orleans campus in Lafitte village suffered was that everything we own now stinks because of the smell of a fridge filled with rotten food. All of my family is currently living at the Hampton Inn but my mom has found an apartment she will be moving into before the month of October is up. As for my husband and I, we may stay at this hotel until November 10th then we plan to stay with my mom until January. As for the rest of my family, my brother-in-law is currently living in an apartment located in uptown New Orleans and my mother-in-law is planning to move in with her daughter in Hammond, LA. Many of my friends are back in Kenner, Baton Rouge or Metairie and a few others are spread out in different states. I just hope that we can all return to New Orleans and work together to make things better than before.