Floating - 100 Miles Off the Shore\r\n\r\n Biloxi, Mississippi is my home town, but I was actually stationed in Norfolk, Virginia the day the storm came through. With my dad stationed in Italy and my brothers living in Kentucky, my mom was the only one home at the time, with her dog Cinco. When the warnings of Katrina came through, I thought it would be just like all the others before it. My mother would evacuate as she always did and then the storm would end up going in another direction. This time I was wrong.\r\n\r\n I was stationed in Virginia, on board the USS Harry S. Truman, one of the Navy\'s newest and larges nuclear powered carriers. With a full crew it holds greater than 5500 people and more than a couple dozen fighter planes. You wouldn\'t know it from looking at it, but it has all the amenities. It has several gyms, a chapel, a library, a hospital wing with an emergency room, two stores, and 6 galleys. You could find food 24 hours a day. We took college courses over the internet. We played bingo over the television. We played football, soccer, and basketball in the hanger bays. On clear nights, we watched movies on a movie screen in the hanger bay with all the bay doors open. Watching movies like that, it felt like we were on a raft floating in the middle of nowhere, with only the stars above us. \r\n\r\n The Truman is a real floating city. Like any other ship however, once you spent 6 months living on board it felt like a sardine can, always dim on the inside, filled with stale air and very very crowded. The amenities were there to make the down time better, but often there wasn\'t much of it. We worked seven days a week underway. It was always hot. It was always noisy. We bunked in rooms of up to 100 people at a time. You were NEVER alone. Our job was usually to get the planes, the pilots and the Marines to the Mediterranean Gulf. \r\n\r\n The Katrina deployment, as we called it, was different. The ship took on a different look and the emotions were personal. Within hours of the storm, we were called to duty. We had less than 24 hrs to pack our sea bags and square away our families, our homes, our second jobs and our classes. Immediately, working parties were in rotation getting food, water, and supplies stocked on board. Instead of our three large hanger bays being filled with the air crew and fighter planes, there were crates and crates of medical and food supplies. The flight deck crew furiously stocked fuel for helicopter support. Usually we spent weeks packing for a deployment, this time we did it in a day.\r\n Once we reached the Gulf, we parked about 100 miles off shore. I realized that that was the closest I\'d come to being home in a long while, and yet, I couldn\'t see it, reach it, or personally help it. All I saw for miles was debris floating past, chunks of wood, people\'s personal possessions and even a few dead cows. I felt helpless. At that distance, the ship felt helpless to me. I was used to floating in the Med, knowing that our pilots and Marines were flying off to do their job, but as I saw the aftermath of Katrina on the news, I struggled to understand how we were helping from so far away. I worried about my home and wanted to be on shore. All my memories were on that beach, 100 miles ahead of us. \r\n\r\n It took a few days to get in touch with my mother. She had evacuated in time, but within the first few days, she and Cinco had returned, despite the warnings not to. She snuck past street patrols and drove through floods to get back. When I finally spoke to her, I asked her about the damage, specifically about the new Florida room that my dad just finished building that summer. He had mentioned to me that the windows were blown out. I expected her to be upset and frustrated, but she surprised me. When I asked about the windows, she laughed and said \"Oh no, those windows were hurricane proof. They are lying on the lawn. The rest of the Florida room is three houses down though.\" \r\nI couldn\'t believe it. My mom had just lost part of her house and part of her roof. She had just spent days driving away from the storm before returning through the remains to get home. Only days later, Cinco would die from complications resulting from the storm. Still, my mom was able to find some humor. After that, I was able to focus on the fact that we were providing as much help as we could while floating 100 miles off the shore. It began to feel like another deployment, but with a personal meaning.\r\n \r\n I did eventually return home to see what happened and what remained. My dad made it home from Italy to make repairs. I moved to New Orleans a year after Katrina. Everyone, even my parents, thought I was crazy to choose orders here. They warned me about the crime and the destruction, but I ignored all that. The Gulf Coast is my home and I\'m glad to be back to watch it rebuild. \r\n\r\n\r\n