Often I am reminded about the horrible event that occurred during August 2005. The horrible event that I am referring to is Hurricane Katrina. I was not actually there, in fact I was no where near the gulf coast and haven\'t been since the storm occurred, but it impacted my life just as it did to every other American. This hurricane occurred a week before my high school began the new school year and sure enough the first few weeks of school were oriented around gathering relief supplies for the victims of this storm. I remember the first National Honor Society meeting we had was a meeting to discuss new ideas regarding raising money and collecting food. This was unusual because usually the first meetings were purely administratively oriented. For weeks, one could not walk through the halls without seeing a poster asking the student body to help with the relief. Over the span of three to four months all of the rallying for support died down but I am still reminded of the tragedy often.\r\n During the summer of 2006, I began working in the Emergency Room at a local hospital. Still to this day I see patients come who once lived in New Orleans. I would say that in the past eight months that I have worked there, I have seen four or five Katrina victims come through our front doors. I remember this one woman in particular who came in because her foot was hurting her. After she was evaluated and cleared to go home and follow up with her primary care doctor, I was sent in to put a splint on her. We got to talking and I found out that she had initially injured her foot while evacuating her house. She was such a pleasant woman and I remember thinking, \"how could a lady so sweet ever be given such a tragedy to deal with?\" That really made everything that I had seen on the news real. \r\n Simply for the fact that the area of the United States where I live was not physically affected by Katrina does not mean that the people weren\'t mentally affected. Every American has the duty to remember hurricane Katrina and how it affected the lives of millions of people. I also believe that because this storm occurred more than one year ago it does not deserve to be forgotten about. There should still be more relief efforts going on and people should remain as active now as they did for the months following Katrina in order to build back one of America\'s great cities.\r\n