Hello I am originally from Metairie, Louisiana. My story begins on the Sunday that hurricane Katrina was rated a category 5. My father came into my room at around 5:oo a.m. and calmly told me get your things together we are leaving. I mean you can only imagine what is running through my head. Being woken up and told we are leaving. It was kind of hard to piecew all the things together. The night before we had talked about waking up packing some things and leaving. I didn\'t think there would be such a rush. I called my fiance and we packed our car and headed to Destin, Florida. Which to me seemed quite crazy. That evening the entire family (which included my mother, father, fiance, grandmother who has althezimers, aunt, 2 uncles, 5 cousins, and 1 friend) stayed awake , we could not pull ourselves away from the television. It was terrifying. Then the news says that the 17th Street canal has broken. They were not clear to say on which side. Eventutally it is made knwn that the Lakeiew side had collasped. I have my own ideas as to why it gave in. My home was on the opposite side. Two weeks after the terrible storm I went home to see how much damage my home received. Travelin home was eerie I will never forget the smells and the color of the sky. The sky was grey it was as if there was absolutely no life anywhere. Seeing military on the streets with guns terrified me. It was like a bad dream that I couldn\'t wake up from. When we arrived to our house we saw it had gotten 2 feet of water which is nothing comapered to what other families had. Still my family went in and tried to salvage whatever they could. We took pictures and tried to get the refigrator out of the house. We were in and out of Metairie within 1 hour. We returned to Destin where emotions began to fly. Everyone had there own breakdown time. Mysel fI cried everyday, I couldn\'t believe the desivaton I saw and the things I was seeing on the news was even worse. I feel as though we ( the entire gulf coast) have been let down. Those who were elected to protect us have really drpped the ball. It is unacceptable in America for families to have fear about where they will sleep once governmental money has run out, or wethere or not they will eat. I am embrassed by our leaders. It has gone on to long that. I hate to concentrate on these negative things when such horror has already occurred but they need to be said, someone, more than one person needs to be held accountable. We are Americans and deserve the finicial help to rebuild our homes. I just pray that everyone effected by this horrible diaster will someday recover and return to some type of normal sense of life.