\r\nWhat: Hurricane Katrina\r\nWhere: New Orleans, LA\r\nWhen: August 29, 2005\r\n\r\nFor anyone who has ever experienced New Orleans first hand and been able to become a part of the city, even if only for a short time, Hurricane Katrina will not be forgotten. The city has a life all its own, a unique culture, attitude, everything, that is just more vibrant and amazing than any other place I have ever been. It\'s a big city, but it doesn\'t quite feel like that. It\'s southern, but not quite like any other southern city. If you have been there you know, because you fell in love instantly, there\'s no way not to. New Orleans is a city I could never even begin to describe to you because as much as I tried I could never capture the spirit that fills the city and everyone there.\r\n\r\nWhen Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast it devastated the lives of millions of people. In addition to the residents of Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana the hurricane also displaced somewhere around 100,000 students from 30 or more schools, and that is where my story begins. I started at Tulane University in August 2003 moving to New Orleans from Northern Virginia right outside Washington DC. It was a culture shock at first because the two cities couldn\'t be more different, but it didn\'t take long for me to get comfortable in my new surroundings. After moving into an apartment at the start of my sophomore year I felt even more at home in the city. I had a car, so I was able to drive around and explore different areas of the city. I had an apartment with my best friend and two crazy roommates, and it was home.\r\n\r\nThis year as I was packing my car to drive the sixteen hours from DC back to Tulane the news reports of a hurricane in the Gulf postponed my plans. It was Saturday morning (August 27th) when I first heard about Hurricane Katrina and classes were scheduled to start the following Wednesday. After assessing the situation, President Cowen announced to the Tulane community that school would be evacuated and classes would be postponed until Thursday morning. After Hurricane Ivan, a year earlier, the Thursday plan seemed like a good idea. Everyone expected the same thing to happen. With Ivan it had looked like the hurricane might make landfall near New Orleans. Tulane closed for a week and the city had ordered evacuations into effect as well. I remember getting ready to leave for Ivan and having to drive to a few different gas stations before I could find one that had any gas. In the end, Ivan hit much further to the east and New Orleans just got a thunderstorm or two.\r\n\r\nThis time, as I was stuck in DC I made calls to find out what my friends planned on doing. After talking to a few I noticed that no one was that worried about it. When I talked to one of my friends he hadn\'t even heard about the hurricane yet. At first many people planned to throw a hurricane party and ride the storm out in NOLA (short for New Orleans, LA). Everyone remembered Ivan and didn\'t want to be stuck in the evacuation traffic for hours. I was anxious to leave DC and get back to school, my friends, and my apartment. A hurricane party would have been so much fun. For a while I was even jealous of all the people already down there who were having the hurricane parties without me. I argued with my parents that I should get on the road and get down to school soon because we were going to be open on Thursday anyway, but they were more cautious about the situation, the relaxed everything-is-going-to-be-fine-college-in-New Orleans attitude hadn\'t over taken them like it had my friends and I.\r\n\r\nHowever, as we waited and watched the weather reports the more everyone realized that this may not be the Ivan-style hurricane party we had been looking forward to. As Sunday rolled on and the news coverage took over every channel on TV I talked with my friends and learned of everyone\'s evacuation plans. To Memphis, Baton Rouge, Houston, everyone began to move out of the city in anticipation of the storm. Even though everyone was talking about the consequences of this hurricane and what it was going to mean for New Orleans in particular, I don\'t think anyone from the city really grasped the gravity of the situation. I mentioned earlier that New Orleans is really something you must experience to understand, and unless you have lived in the city you cannot really appreciate the mindset that overwhelms you when you live there. I don\'t think I realized exactly how much it had become a part of me until now that I am spending time in school in DC again. It\'s an attitude of no worries, easy going, rollin\' along, care free summertime. I\'m not quite sure where it comes from but it\'s everywhere down there. It was this attitude that just kept all of us relaxed and not nearly as worried about the storm as we should have been.\r\n\r\nAs the storm crashed into New Orleans on Monday morning the world I have come to love so much came crashing in with it. Most of my friends had planned on evacuating after the mandatory evacuation was ordered, but there was no way to know for sure. There were no phones working, there was no electricity in the city, no water, nothing. I called cell phones, but the (504) numbers were all not working. No one was online to talk to and see what was going on. Everyone I loved was completely out of reach and the only news I could get were the pictures of the city that had become my home devastated and completely under water. The only thing to do was sit and hope that everyone who evacuated got out safely and that the few people I knew who weren\'t going to evacuate found someplace safe to ride out the storm. It\'s a horrible and helpless feeling to know that so much of what you care about is being destroyed and your life is being changed and you have no control and there is nothing you can do to help or stop it from happening. I sat back and watched as my adopted home was hit by one of the worst storms in the history of the United States and there was nothing to do but just that, sit and watch.\r\n\r\nAfter a while watching TV seemed pointless. There were the same dozen clips of news that were on every station over and over again. The headlines were always the same and everything was just not enough information to really understand what was going on. The news was just too limited and then became filled with political agenda making it worthless. The city\'s response before the hurricane was horrible, and after it hit the city slipped into complete chaos. Rescue efforts were threatened by the gangs of people left in the city and people continued to suffer as help could not deal with the overwhelming situation. I think that it is hard for anyone to know exactly what happened on the government side because the facts were as murky as the flood waters and no one really had any knowledge. The media had chosen to report the story from a very limited view. Blame President President Bush? Maybe. Governor Blanco? Probably. Mayor Ray Nagin? Who knows. All I know is that being 1100 miles away makes me sick. I don\'t care who to blame, I just want things fixed. Many of my friends have a quote in their Instant Message profile; \"Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans?\" Every time I read it all I can think is \"God. I wish I didn\'t.\"\r\n\r\nBefore the hurricane hit there had been that uncertainty, how bad was it going to be, where exactly will it hit, what will it mean for us, but it has been the uncertainty after the storm that has been the worst for me. As soon as everyone began to realize that this wasn\'t Hurricane Ivan and it was going to have a real impact on New Orleans and Tulane University the questions seemed to become more confusing and harder to answer. I didn\'t know what was going to happen to Tulane and if we would be able to go back for the fall semester, or at all. I wanted to know how my apartment had managed through the storm. I wanted to know where my friends were and what they were doing and what they were thinking. I wanted some concrete answers on how the city was and what was going on and what was going to happen, but there were no concrete answers to anything at all.\r\n\r\nThe next week was a blur of news clips, phone calls, checking the Tulane emergency website and more confusion. I heard from friends that they were looking at going to other schools for the fall but with no word from President Cowen I was reluctant to accept that the University might be closed. The last I had heard was right before anyone realized exactly how much damage the hurricane had done and that classes had been postponed for a week. The news wasn\'t saying anything about the Uptown area of New Orleans and part of me just didn\'t want to let go of the idea that I could go home. I knew the city was a mess and things were not good at all, but I had no idea what else to do. Letting go of that illusion, that we would have a fall semester and everything would be fine, was just too hard with all the uncertainty that it brought.\r\n\r\nAlthough I was overwhelmed with the situation and not willing to think about the possibility that I might not be able to go back to Tulane for the fall my parents were much more removed from the situation. The hurricane hit on Monday and by Friday they had already gotten me into American University for their Washington Semester program. I had heard about the program, I knew basically what it was, I was not excited. People kept telling me, \"Oh, isn\'t this such a great opportunity. You get to spend a semester studying and working in Washington.\" I am a political science major so I can see how it would be exciting. Maybe. If a hurricane had not destroyed my school and that wasn\'t the reason I was going someplace else. My best friend and roommate from New Orleans ended up coming up for the Washington semester also, and it helped to have a friend around. We began to settle in and get used to the whole idea of a semester away.\r\n\r\nIt had barely been a month when we all got to go through everything all over again as Hurricane Rita came into the Gulf Coast and everyone from New Orleans watched with their stomach in knots praying that it wouldn\'t happen again. It was interesting to see how everyone prepared for this hurricane so much better than for Katrina. After the build up before Rita it seemed like a big let down after the storm itself. Everyone prepared so well for this storm and after it wasn\'t the huge, intense, devastating impact that everyone was expecting I think the media just lost interest in hurricanes in general. After September the media didn\'t really show information about the Gulf Coast. It would pop up in the occasional Daily Show comment, or as the basis for an episode of South Park, but the news coverage was finished and everything went back to normal.\r\n\r\nFor me however, there were those constant little reminders that things were not exactly normal. I got calls from ADT about the security system at my sorority house being low on batteries. I got my Entergy bill in the mail, for the apartment that I thought had no power. Sometime after Rita my landlord had gone back into the city and told me that our apartment faired well. No serious damage, only a few feet of water, and we would be able to live there in January.\r\n\r\nIn October my dad and I took a trip down to New Orleans. We went down for a long weekend, just to see what exactly was going on in my apartment and how everything had fared the storm. A few hours outside Louisiana we started to see proof of the hurricane. At first it was just little things like downed trees and twisted road signs, but the closer we got to the city the more evident the damage became. From Interstate 59 you could see buildings missing roofs and piles and piles of tree debris along the roadside. When we got into Louisiana there is a bridge that we drive in on over the Lake and only half of it was usable since the storm. As we drove over the bridge I looked to my right and saw whole sections of bridge shifted off their legs or missing completely.\r\n\r\nIt was strange to drive through the city that I had come to know so well and have it seem so untouched and so devastated at the same time. Most of the buildings seemed to be fine although a water line was sometimes visible and most were boarded up or just closed. I drove down the streets and there were other cars driving, and there were also cars parked in the median or on the roadside. They had been left there before the hurricane and the water damage was noticeable. At night it just got worse, the city seemed so abandoned. There were no street lights. There were no lights in most of the houses. There were no people around. Nothing. The only thing that made me feel a little better was that I did drive past a few of the bars by campus and through the Quarter a bit and there were places open and there were people there.\r\n\r\nAs it turned out there was more damage in my apartment then my landlord had lead us to believe, but it was better off than most of the city. The mold was intense and there was dust and debris everywhere. I don\'t think I will ever forget that horrible smell that took over our apartment and didn\'t get any better after going outside to the open air. Everything we had downstairs in our apartment was ruined and had to be thrown away. There had been a leak in the roof so some of the upstairs ceilings also had water damage and needed to be replaced. The walls were ripped off and everything was cleaned with a special cleaner to kill the mold. Since I\'ve been back in DC I have spoken with our landlord and he tells me that everything has been taken care of and that it is ready for us as soon as we get back after Christmas. I am excited, but nervous all at the same time.\r\n\r\nTulane will re-open for the spring semester along with a condensed summer semester to help us all catch up. Even though the city as a whole was not as lucky, I will be able to go home. My apartment will be newly renovated with all new appliances. It will take us a longer time to rebuild Tulane and the city, but we will. It may never be quite the place it was before, but New Orleans will still be there. The city is an amazing place and everyone who has lived there knows it, we will pick ourselves up and put our city back together. And in true New Orleans spirit, right in time for Mardi Gras.\r\n\r\nOriginally posted on the Memory Archive: http://www.memoryarchive.org/en/Hurricane_Katrina%2C_August_2005%2C_by_Elissa