I remember my grandma calling me on the Saturday before the storm and telling me, \"Marki, pack up some clothes....we are evacuating for the hurricane.\" I had no idea what she was talking about. I was oblivious to the fact that there was a storm out there. So me and my brother got our stuff together and spent the night at my grandma\'s house. Early Sunday morning we left for my aunt\'s house in Destin, Florida. Once the storm had past and we discovered nothing really went wrong we had a pretty good celebration....until the next day when the levees broke. \r\n\r\nAlso, back in New Orleans East, my other grandmother was in the intensive care unit at \r\nMethodist hospital. I called and left a message for her the day the storm and and didn\'t hear from her until 2 months after the storm. My grandpa stayed at a friends house in Covington to be near her. We finally got in touch with him a week after the storm and he was on his way to Texas to be where they evacuated my grandmother. She was in Galveston and then Rita came along so she was moved once again to Austin. She finally came home in November. It was the scariest thing almost losing her. Her body was so weak and she couldn\'t even breathe on her own by the time the storm hit so they had to get her out of there fast.\r\n\r\nThen we have my mother\'s story...She had the bright idea of staying at her friend\'s house on Esplenade. She ended up having to be helecoptered off the interstate and taken to the airport. From there she was sent all the way to New York. I finally found her online on the WWL TV website where you can post if you are ok or not. \r\n\r\nSo back to my own personal story, which is hardly interesting at all. I ended up staying in Florida for a month and I went to school there for 2 weeks. It seemed that the only things people were interested in were if you lost your house or not. When I finally got back home to Mandeville, everything changed so much. Traffic was alot worse since people from the New Orleans areas moved over. Our population doubled in size and our roads are not prepared to that. The city is made up to 2 lane highways. Then our school also grew. It was weird sharing my senior year with \"outsiders.\" Not that I was against them being with us, it is just that I had all the expectations of my senior year and none of them lived up to be true, except for graduation!\r\n

Citation

“[Untitled],” Hurricane Digital Memory Bank, accessed November 28, 2024, https://hurricanearchive.org/items/show/4236.