My name is Erica and I am 16 years old and I\'m from Vidor, Texas. Hurricane Rita hit not too long before I turned 16. I honestly didn\'t think the hurricane would be that bad, considering I had heard of hurricanes before that were supposed to be terrible and we didn\'t get a drop of rain. But when they had mentioned a mandatory evacuation, I admit I panicked a little. When we evacuated, we started to go down this one road that seemed like everyone wanted to take that road. We traveled maybe a mile within an hour in a half. It was so hot. Almost unbearable. Finally we turned around and decided to go later. Almost everyone I knew had called to check on all of us. At first we were going to go to Talita Ben but decicded not to. The hurricane was supposed to hit there and it would\'ve taken way too long to get there. Instead, we went to Tomball, Texas where my aunt and uncle lived. Almost my whole family decided to go there also. It was so crowded, but I didn\'t complain. We had great weather, electricity, lots of food, hot water....everything was fine. If anything I gained about seven pounds from being so bored. My mom, being a diabetic, was easily effected from stress during the whole thing so spent most of the evacuation in the Tomball Hospital. We stayed the entire evacuation in Tomball. We went to our house pretty often to clean out the fridge, clean our house and things like that so we didn\'t have so much to do when we finally went home to stay. As soon as we got electricity we went home. The only damage we had was water on the office floor and in the laundryroom floor. It smelled so bad....like wet carpet. But, of course, we had our carpet replaced. There were so many limbs down. You could barely get down our road, or any other road for that matter. But with everything that came along with finally being home, the best thing was being able to sleep in my own bed.