My Experience Part 1

I've taken a while, But I wanted to at some point tell my recount of Katrina. My experience. It's not as draumatic as some peoples - but it's mine.

I moved to New Orleans on Oct. 21,1991. Andrew was my first hurricane. It was pretty scary because it too was a cat 5. The only one scarier was George, which I believe was a cat 3 - but it was marked to come up the river. THAT is supposedly the worst case scenario everyone fears. I'll say right now, katrina was NOT the worst case scenario. It was horrible and destructive, but the left side of the eyewall grazed us. That means the dirty part of the storm actually bashed all of everyone west of us. Had it moved over and we took the west side of the eyewall, we probably wouldn't be having this discussion. Or at least we probably wouldn't be having it from New Orleans.

The thing to understand is, we get threatened by hurricanes every year. We have lives that revolve around work and home. That means we have to determine when to leave. We can't leave just because there's a storm out there. It's difficult to know for certain where a storm will hit and how bad it will be. We had tropical storm Cindy blow through just a couple of weeks before Katrina. They've only just confirmed that it was really a hurricane and not a tropical storm as thought. So, we all remained during a hurricane because we were told it was a tropical storm. It was a minimun cat 1 though, I'd stay for that.

Well, the week of Katrina, I had briefly heard she was crossing Florida, but because of my work schedule, I wasn't really able to keep up with it until that Saturday Aug. 27th. I was getting ready for Shabbat service and decided to check in on it to see where it was going. To my dismay, on the tube was a flurry of warnings that it was headed straight for us and people should leave. They were already evacuating the lower lying parishes.

I went to service knowing I'd probably be staying with my friends that evening to ride out the storm. After service, I had a half hour to pack some things and secure my home. I had two cats and a bird - cockateil. I could not take them with me. So, I left them with as much food and water as I could. In hindesite, I should have filled up the bathtub or sink or something for the cats, and I had a whole other bag of catfood that didn't get emptied. So, they had one 3 pound bag for them to eat. I packed enough clothes for about two or three days and only a pair of flip flops for shoes. I didn't think we were going to leave. Their home is sitting on higher ground and I've usually spent the night there during storms just as a precaution. (I don't drive. If I have to leave in an emergency I would have no way out.) Like I said, I only had a half hour so I just grabed stuff w/o time to really plan anything.

We watched the progression through the night and decided we'd leave around 2am. The traffic would probably be better then. This decision was made when we saw that sometime around 1am the new update put Katrina to winds up to 145 mph over the 115 mph she had remained up until then. It's worth noting that still we thought we'd be gone for a few days.

June, the wife of the couple I was with, had a difficult time accepting we needed to leave. She didn't want to leave her house. I don't blame her.

I want to note that the Mayor - Mayor Nagin wanted to issue a mandatory evacuation order, but due to bylaws he could not. he told us that his friend from the national weather service personally called him and told him in 33 years this was the first storm to really frighten him. He told us that if we could leave, to leave now. He pressed us all to leave. There's no denying that he made the effort to get us out.

We arrived in Livingston, Tx on Sunday Aug 28th at 11am. We were all tired, so we napped for a while. I stayed in the room with them since I couldn't afford my own room.

Later that day, we went into town and went site seeing. Little did we know we were actually orienting ourselves for our month stay there. We found a great little lunch place that was much like a little lunch boutique store. very quaint. We met a lady there who was doing a drawing for a stained glass window. June and I both entered. She had lots of questions when she learned we were from New Orleans. That evening we had chinese and also noted an interesting barbecue place called Bodacious barbecue!

I fought sleep that night. I was stressed thinking about the storm and leaving my babies behind. I finally woke up for the last time at about 5:30 am. It was pretty funny! I couldn't figure out what time it was, so I thought it was daytime. I finally just put my shoes on and went out to find it was still dark. I decided to stay out there till 6am when the lobby opened.

When we have storms, I spend my free time at home watching every second of it. I wanna know where it is and where it's going and how big it is. It was stressing me that I couldn't sit in front of the tub 24/7 and watch it move forward. As soon as the lobby was opened, I ran in to watch their tv. At that time, the storm was hitting the coast and moving up. I ate some breakfast at the continental breakfast table and then went back to bed. That morning I connected with the staff there. They were very very kind and showed compassion even before the devastation.

I don't remember the second time I woke up, but what I woke up to was a nightmare. I went into the lobby again and there were more evacuees there along with my friends watching the storm. Then report began to come in that there was flooding and people were on their roofs. Now, I didn't take that seriously at first. Several years ago a barge hit the river front mall. The reporters reported bodies floating on the water. The bodies were really manniquins from the local body shop. You can see why I was doubtful.

However, the reporters began showing us the water rising around the superdome. It was rising quickly. One of them went to look at some thing and the water was ankle deep. When she returned just a few minutes later it was already thigh deep. It happened very quickly.

As we watched it, we were more horrified by the minute. None of us knew a thing about our own homes. Were they standing? Were they under water? None of us knew!