Hurricanes Katrina and Rita August/September 2005\r\n My wife and I (Jane and Dan Sikes) had driven from New Orleans to Jacksonville, Florida, for a beachfront vacation with our daughter and our two granddaughters. Hurricane Katrina tracked into the Gulf of Mexico headed for Florida. We cancelled our beach plans and booked an inland hotel near their home in Jacksonville. Our plan was to return to New Orleans shortly after the storm. Due to the emergency arising, and we becoming refugees from New Orleans, part of the bill was paid by the Red Cross.\r\n When the storm track shifted to New Orleans, Jane\'s brother made plans to evacuate from his home there to Arkansas. Enroute, he would bring their elderly mother to our younger daughter\'s home in Natchitoches, LA. Their mother, Kathryn Dicken, resided at Woldenberg Village Living Center in Algiers, LA.\r\n Jane and I began driving to Natchitoches where we would assume the care of her mother. We met in Natchitoches and proceeded on to Houston, Texas. We lodged there with my cousin, Emily Griffin, intending to return to New Orleans shortly after the storm. The city\'s devastation caused a delay in those plans.\r\n Along came Hurricane Rita. Houston was preparing to evacuate. We three refugees relocated again to friends in Fort Worth, Texas.\r\n After a week or so, we learned our Terrytown home was intact and made plans to return to New Orleans. Our son, Daniel R. Sikes, had entered the closed city with a contractor\'s help. He, with friends, cleaned out spoiled food from our and others\' refrigerators and freezers. He reported our home intact. Earlier we had received a report from a neighborhood friend, via a basic landline phone requiring no electricity, that our home was still standing and not flooded. Cell phones were jammed but some landline phones were working. \r\n Woldenberg had closed after the storm and evacuated the remaining residents to Houston, Texas. They had yet to reopen when we returned to the city. Also, few stores were open. Jane and her mother drove to Natchitoches, LA, to stay with family. I stayed in New Orleans and began cleaning up our property and arranging a blue tarp roof from the Corps of Engineers. Major damage for us included a large hole in our roof over the garage and shingle damage all over the roof. Eventually, Allstate Insurance funded a new roof.\r\n We had a freezer that had quit working long before the storm. the Corp of Enginners were hauling away appliances, brush and other refuse placed curbside regularly. They took the freezer away---perhaps our only positive event caused by the storm. Also the friends and family who took us into their homes!\r\n Early in November Jane\'s mother was able to return to Woldenberg, now reopened, and life settled into a somewhat normal routine for our family.\r\n