Below is a link to a story about my family that ran in the Washington Post a few weeks after we evacuated from our home in Chalmette, LA the morning before Katrina. \r\n\r\nIt\'s been over six months since that awful day and we\'ve worked hard to rebuild our lives. After almost seven months our homes sits as it was the morning after the storm, our memories and possessions mold and mud covered our hose abandoned in our once vibrant neighborhood. We\'ve found a new place to live and I\'ve found a good job with Fairfax County Government where I worked for almost ten years prior. We are among the lucky ones, we are moving on with our lives which will never be the same. We do not plan to return to live in our beloved south Louisiana and only hope that our government which has failed us as tax paying law abiding citizens of the US will eventually begin to rebuild the damage which it shares a large part of the blame for. Any member of Congress who will make decisions about the regions fate cannot do so in good conscience without going there to see what nature (and the failure of the federal government) has brought to the region. One has to see, smell, feel, taste and hear the silence of the devastation and imagine if it was there home to understand.\r\n\r\nhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/14/AR2005091400958_3.html