I was very critical of the people who had stayed in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina was approaching. How could people be so stupid to put themselves in harm\'s way! Well, when we were under a mandatory evacuation order for Hurricane Rita, what did we do? We stayed home, of course. After all, I always bragged about how I knew that we could live for at least two weeks off of the food that I have stored. We live on a \"high hill\" which must be at least 12 feet above sea level! No flood could ever possibly reach my doorstep, and my house is three steps high. My husband, David, had pieced together a wonderful whole-house generator after Hurricane Andrew. It worked fine for Hurricane Lilly a few years ago. We had lots of diesel. This hurricane was supposed to hit in the Galveston area. Surely the winds couldn\'t be too bad here. I told my friends that we were staying because we weren\'t worried about strong winds, and we were prepared to be self-sufficient after the storm hit, even if there was some flooding.\r\n\r\nMy niece had invited her Hurricane Katrina Evacuee fater, who was living with Momma at the time, and her 87-year-old grandmother, my mother, to come and spend the night at her house in Lafayette that Friday night. Momma asked me to pick up her car and drive it to my house - just in cast it would flood. Her house is a few miles south of mine, and the Vermilion Bay is just a couple of miles south of hers. You see, Momma remembered well how in 1957, when she was nearly nine months pregnant with me, there was a horrible flood at her home following Hurricane Audrey, which had come ashore at Johnson\'s Bayou. Water had nearly entered her back door, missing by mere inches.\r\n\r\nMy daughter drove me to Henry to pick up Momma\'s car. I had thought about the safe in her house which had some important documents. We always left it craked open so that we didn\'t have to actually use the combination to open it. Maybe I should at least close the safe. I did that. I chuckled to myself when I saw that Momma had carefully placed many of her shoes and her good suitcases on her bed - just in case it would flood.\r\n\r\nMaybe I could go to the store one more time. I had three loaves of bread, five gallons of milk, six dozen eggs, at least 15 gallons of water, and a full tank of gas in my van. That should be enough for six people and one three-month-old baby.\r\n\r\nThe wind started to blow late in the day on Friday. This wasn\'t going to be too bad. The air conditioner was running constantly so that we wouldn\'t be too uncomfortable when the power went out. We had the TV going from The Weather Channel to ABC to CBS. What\'s this? It\'s not going to hit near Galveston? Closer to the state line? Hmm. That\'s a little worrisome.\r\n\r\nWe lost our electricity at about 11:00 that night. Each of us had a flashlight nearby. It was kind of fun for a little while. My husband, David, couldn\'t go out to start the generator in the rain, so he just wen to bed. One by one, the kids fell asleep, but I couldn\'t stop going from window to window to check out the wind and to see if the water was rising. There is a canal in our backyard. I was carrying around my battery-operated radio which also caught local TV stations. Now they were saying that it would probably come ashore near Camern - well maybe Johnson\'s Bayou. That didn\'t sound good for us. No hurricane had ever come ashore in that area since Audrey. And this storm was much bigger and stronger than Audrey had been. I finally fell asleep close to daybreak.\r\n\r\nWhen we woke up, we wanted to check for damages. Things looked pretty good. Even though we much have had close to 100-MPH wind gusts, there was not even one large branch in our yard. Hurricane Lilly had taken care of all of the weak branches a couple of years ago. All of our structures looked fine. The only damage that was apparent was a couple of broken birdhouses. The water was over the banks of the canal, but it had been this high before in the 25 years that we had lived here. Well, maybe this was just as high as it ever had been before. It looked like we had dodged the bullet, as the weathermen like to say. I called a few people from my home phone at about 8:00 that morning and told them that we were okay. David went out and started the generator. I cooked a really big breakfast.\r\n\r\nWhen we are flooded in, it\'s always fascinating to watch the water. The canal in our backyard which flows to the Vermilion River, which flows to the Vermilion Bay, which flows to the Gulf of Mexico. At about 9:30, I noticed that there was a really strong current coming in where the canal is. It\'s fun to watch breanches and barrels and whatever float by. But wait, the water is starting to come up some more. This must be that surge that we were told about. I warned David that he should check to see if there was anything important on the floor of what we call the shell shack behind the house because it\'s lower than the hill. It looked like water was going to go inside of that building. That had never happened before. My 9-year-old-son was having fun floating on an old tire that was in the backyard. The current in my chicken yard was even strong now! It looked like duckweed was collecting in the fence there. I later learned that there were millions of fire ants floating with that duckweed. The water was inching its way up my backyard.\r\n\r\nDavid went to his big shop, which is on the opposite side of the house, across a large cow pasture. When I looked out of the front door, I noticed that water was starting to fill the pasture behind his shop. This CERTAINLY had never happened before. I could see him trying to raise things up. I slipped on some boots and in just that little time, the water was almost touching the cement slab of his shop. When I offered to help, he said that there was no point, he just had too much stuff to move. Water was completely surrounding us at an incredible speed. I could see my neighbor in her yard in the distance, and all we could do was look at each other. They soon left their house in a high truck, fully expecting to find water in their house when they came back. Fortunately, it missed by inches.\r\n\r\nI walked back home, just 10 minutes later, and my now, the water was over my ankles on the long driveway to my house. It was still rising. I tried not to cry, but I don\'t handle emergencies very well. I brought my two young children in my bedroom and asked them to pray a rosary with me. I told them that if it was part of God\'s plan that we die that day, then we would die, but Jesus had the power to calm the sea, and he has the power to stop this water from rising. After we had finished saying our rosary, we checked the current. It didn\'t seem to be as strong now! The water was still rising, but not nearly as quickly as before.\r\n\r\nDavid pulled our aluminum flat (boat) near the house and got the motor running, just in case we would need it. Our small herd of cattle made its way to the small patch of visible land which was just outside my yard. My cousin\'s cattle across the canal weren\'t as lucky as mine. They were sometimes standing in water up to their necks. Several times, they would attempt to swim to us, but they would get acared and turn back when they couldn\'t feel land underneath them. It was so sad to hear them crying all night and day, but there was nothing that we could do for them. Fortunatly, they all seemed to have made it through in decent shape. Hundreds of other cattle didn\'t fare so well.\r\n\r\nAll afternoon, I kept my eyes on that water level. My nephew-in-law called and offered to send someone to rescue us. My oldest daughter called from Lafayette and offered to do the same. I told them both that it would have to come up another three feet before it would come into our house. I reassured them that we had a running boat and promised that we would find a way out if it got too bad. On TV, there was a call for boats to help rescue people in low-lying areas. Helicopters starting flying over us. David said that he flagged off at least five helicopters during that day and the next, and I flagged off two. We must have been a sight for the people in those helicopters. We had less than an acre of dry land, and here we were with small children playing in the yard! My youngest daughter said that she couldn\'t wait to tell her friends that a helicopter tried to rescue her. I told her that some of her friends probably WERE being rescued by helicopter, and I was right!\r\n\r\nAt some point Saturday, David reminded me that there were probably thousands of homes with water in them, including my mother\'s home in Henry. David and our oldest son planned on going there by boat on Sunday, the next day.\r\n\r\nWhen I wasn\'t watching the water, I was watching TV. When they showed the first aerial footage of Vermilion Parish, we saw Momma\'s house. It\'s easy to spot her big red barn. There we no land visible around the house, but for some reason, they were showing it way down on the bottom of the screen. I told my family in Lafayette about seeing it so that they could watch for it too.\r\n\r\nThat night before going to bed, we weren\'t sure that the water was finished rising. It was only four inches below a dangerous level for our water well, and about a foot below a a dangerous level for our generator. David and my son shut it off for the night. They had a tough time fighting off those horrible fire ants! Today, they are still making nexts everywhere in our yard!\r\n\r\nSunday morning, my neighbors drove up by boat to check on their house. They were riding in another neighbor\'s boat. He told us that he had been to Henry by boat Saturday afternoon. When we explained where my mom\'s house was, he said that he thought that there was water half-way up the windows. David and my son left soon after that. They were able to leave my house and go all the way to my mom\'s and tie up on her mailbox. The water had indeed been halfway up her windows. There had been at least six feet of water outside of her house and four feet of water and mucky mud inside of her house. The strangest thing that they found before even getting out of their boat was an aluminum flat tied to the gutter on the front of the house and hanging about three feet off of the ground. When I mentioned the boat to my niece, she commented that she thought that someone was shown on the TV clip being rescued from the roof! That all made sense. \r\n\r\nMonday morning, we loaded up the small generator, the pressure washer, a blower, a big tank of fresh water, and a tractor and drove to Momma\'s in Henry. Just a few minutes after we arrived, a truck towing a boat trailer drove up. I regret not getting the name of the man, but he had put his family and the family next door in his boat and tried to drive them to safety. When he had hit something with his boat, his motor went underwater. The motor wouldn\'t run anymore after that. He was able to grab a tree in my mother\'s yard. While they were there, he said that two alligators were circling them. One of them was about twelve feet long. They were able to somehow get to the house and tie the boat to the gutter. A helicopter spotted them and nine people were rescued from Momma\'s roof!\r\n\r\nThe first thing we did when we arrived for cleanup was try to figure out what furniture could be saved. Then I started pushing mud off of the patio. There was 3-4 inches of that muck everywhere. David cleaned the furniture with the pressure washer, and we put them on the clean patio. Momma came to see the house. It was very difficult to walk in the house. You had to wear boots, and everything had been tossed around, like a whirlpool was going on in t here. My niece took some pictures that had been on the shelves and the entire contents of the safe home with her to try to dry them out. Apparently, the safe was designed for fires, not water.\r\n\r\nI drove a little farther down the road to our church. There had been about four feet of water in there, too, but the mud was not as bad as it was at Momma\'s. It looked like the support beam had popped up in the center aisle the entire length of the church. Much of it will have to be rebuilt. I hope that the Diocease of Lafayette will allow us to rebuild. They haven\'t made a decision yet and it\'s now three months since Rita hit. The unfortunate thing is that much of our community of Henry consists of elderly. I\'m pretty sure that most of them do not feel strong enough to rebuild. So many of the homes literally floated away. Momma wants to go to a nursing home, but her grandchildren won\'t let her. Several of her neighbors are already in some of the local nursing homes, and one has died since the hurricane hit. I drove through Henry one morning before daybreak two weeks after the hurricane hit. I could only find two houses that looked like there were people inside. \r\n\r\nI rode around some days with a couple of cameras and took lots of pictures. We checked out the cemeteries where we have family buried. None of our tombs were affected, but there were lots that had popped up and floated away. Some stayed right next to the original location, and some could barely be seen in the distance. I still don\'t think that all of the tombs have been located, and I know that they haven\'t all been identified. \r\n\r\nWhat happened in Henry is sad, but it didn\'t only happen in Henry. So many rural and urban communities were hit hard by Hurricane Rita. Fortunately, there seems to be no loss of life in Louisiana.\r\n\r\nMomma\'s grandchildren talked her out of going to a nursing home. She had been saying for a couple of years now that she wanted to go there. I think that her garden was the main reason she stayed in her home. Her garden is destroyed now, covered with marsh grasses and debris. We\'re trying to finish a small house next-door. It doesn\'t look like she\'ll be in there for Christmas, which is three days away, but maybe she will be there before New Year\'s Day! We\'ll have to make a new garden for her there.\r\n\r\nWe keep going back and forth with each other about what should be done with her house. We\'ll probably try to restore it, but we may just get discouraged by the overwhelming job there is to do. We may not even be allowed to rebuild it at that height because of building code changes. Lots of local people are raising their houses. Whatever building we may have there in the future, I\'m pretty sure that we\'ll have flood insurance to cover any future damages.\r\n\r\nIf you have been affected by any recent hurricane, I highly recommend that you write your own story and send it to your friends. This has been a healing process for me.