9-17-06

Hurricane Katrina

We left on Sunday, August 28, 2005. That was the day before the so-called “worst

disaster to hit the U.S.” hit my home. We had originally intended to stay because Hurricane Katrina was only a mere Category Three hurricane. Nobody felt that it would be extremely horrible or damaging. For us coastal Mississippians, it was another routine hurricane. Board up the house, buy water, load up the car and evacuate. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. It was just another summer in the peak of hurricane season...for some people. For me, it was another bout of worrying and stress. I remember when my mother first told me that we would be moving to the Gulf Coast just ten years ago. I knew that hurricanes were prominent and I was none too thrilled. Obviously I had no say in the matter of housing, so I dreaded summertime, which had at least three or so hurricane induced evacuations.

On Sunday morning, August 28, I tuned into The Weather Channel’s“Tropical Update” to check the status of the storm. To my horror it had strengthened to a Category Five. I could feel my stomach drop and adrenaline surged through me. My only thought was, “We need to get out of here.” So I crept into my mother’s room where she was 

watching the same thing and I begged her to let us evacuate. By this time I was overly worried, knowing it was not a good idea to stay in our house. After all, we were less than a mile from the beach. She tried to calm me down and told me that we were, in fact, going to evacuate later that day. Slightly relaxed, I went to my room and prayed that everyone would be alright.

By midday, Hurricane Katrina was barreling toward the Gulf Coast-Louisiana line. My family and I loaded up the car and started to drive to Dothan, Alabama, which was five hours away.

I looked up at the sky and every single cloud seemed to be racing to the North, trying to escape the powerful clutches of Katrina. It was an eerie feeling, like everything was chaotically peaceful. There was a sense of urgency in the air and I felt there was something different about this storm. I left knowing, or hoping rather, that it would be like all our other evacuations. We would come home and half the pine needles from our trees would be gone, but otherwise everything would be left in tact. Once on the road, it seemed everyone else had the same idea of evacuation, so it took around seven hours to get there. We checked into a hotel and closely monitored The Weather Channel. The outer bands of Katrina were starting to come inland and no one was safe, not even us.

On the day the hurricane made its official land fall, my mother received a call from our neighbors stating that a large pine tree had fallen on our house. My mother started to 

cry, but I was thankful that none of us were in the house at the time. In my ten years of living on the coast, we had evacuated for at least ten or so hurricanes and tropical storms. I never expected anything horrible to happen and I wondered how other people were faring.

The next morning we decided to get out of Alabama and drive another five hours to my grandmother’s house in Gainesville, Florida. Once we arrived, we were emotionally and physically exhausted. Damage reports were all over the news and everyone kept saying it was the biggest disaster to hit the U.S. It was surreal to think it had happened to my home, to people I loved. After two weeks, my mother, aunt and stepfather decided to go home and survey the damage. Many roads were closed so they had to find alternate routes and back roads before finally arriving in Ocean Springs, Mississippi. My mother reported that the large pine tree wasresting atop our living room roof, creating a nice, albeit impromptu, skylight.

Meanwhile, we had to decide if we should transfer to the Gainesville school because we did not know how long our school was going to be out. We had heard dates such as January 15 float around and that was too long a time to be out of school. I was not too thrilled at the idea of transferring to another school in the middle of my senior year. I did not have time to mull it over because a few days later, my aunt returned to fetch my brother and me.

On the drive home, I did not know what to expect. Will I recognize anything? How badly were things damaged? For the past few nights, I had been having horrible dreams about running through torn buildings and shattered homes and not knowing where I was. Granted, I had seen some of these images on the news, but the media mainly focused on New Orleans. As we approached the Alabama/Mississippi state line, I could already begin to see signs of damage.

Road signs were twisted, large pine trees were uprooted, halves of houses gone. Steadily we were approaching my town and things looked so oddly out of place and different. Landmarks I had grown up accustomed to were gone, decimated. I quickly learned that the Ocean Springs-Biloxi bridge was dismembered, houses along the beach front completely wiped out, (save for the foundation) and the water was unsanitary. As I gazed out the window, I saw the trees were a sickly brown due to the salty storm surge and debris lined the road. My home was recognizable, but battered and bruised. I knew it would not be the same and it would take many months of hard work to restore it. Outdoors was unnaturally quiet and scorching hot. Every animal seemed to have fled and trains that regularly passed through the town were absent. We did not have electricity, meaning no air conditioning, leaving us to fend for ourselves in the humid, Mississippi heat. There was a military headquarters temporarily set up at Ocean Springs Middle School and they handed out ice, water, Meals Ready to Eat and blankets. I quickly learned to enjoy MRE’s as they were our only source of food.

Schools were obviously closed; however, they sustained minor damage. My high school’s auditorium roof caved in and flooded, our marching band trailer moved from outside the band hall to the other side of the school. Across the street was Oak Park Elementary where my mother worked. A tornado had chewed up the west wing of the school and trailers had to be used in place of the damaged classrooms. Dedicated peopled worked hard so that school would start back on September 22. It was my senior year and starting school again was definitely different. The administration lowered the number of credits needed to graduate and we could not take anymore field trips or have fund raisers. Someone coined the term “Katriniors” and soon I was a graduating Katrinior.

Around September, a wonderful thing happened: We started receiving help from churches and people from all over the United States. There was such an outpouring of kindness and a willingness to help that I was touched that human compassion still thrived. A church from Kansas graciously helped us cut and take away the pine tree which was lounging on our roof. I felt like I could not say thank you enough to the benevolent souls who put their lives on hold in order to come down and help us. It took great courage and a strong faith in God, I think, to commit themselves and their skills to rebuild the coast and lives. Volunteers from Minnesota, Tennessee, Washington and even Brazil and England donated their labor and time to rebuild homes. Everywhere I looked, I saw many people hammering new shingles on a roof or putting up sheet rock. If anything good came out of this horrible disaster, it’s that humanity can look out for each other and lift each other 

up. Some people could not fathom the loss but many people were just grateful to be alive and realized that their material possessions were not important. Because of the hurricane, I have met some truly amazing people and they inspired me to help as many people as I can. Life had to keep going after the storm. Yes, we got hit and almost wiped out by the biggest disaster to hit the U.S. but we also bounced back. I am glad that our lives did not get put on hold by this disaster and that we moved forward instead of standing still.