My father was living in a nursing home in New Orleans which wasn\'t evacuating for the storm. He had advanced dementia and was not mobile. My 80 year old mother and I went to be with him in his building. The day after the storm on Monday, we saw looting all around us and tree limbs blocking numerous streets and the electricity was off in the 100 degree heat in the building. Knowing we had to get out but no one was coming to help us, our attempts to connect by any kind of phone to the outside world were not working. On Tuesday, after many hours of fear and exhaustion of keeping things going, we heard a bit of TV news during the generator being on - the mayor saying the city was now going to flood 9-12 feet and the workers started having breakdowns. The city water was turned off at that time and we were panicked.\r\n\r\nI called all the numbers in my cell phone at night over and over and one of them suddenly went through to Birmingham, Alabama, to an acquaintance who I told had to help us get out of there. Apparently he proceeded to work the phone for three hours in the middle of the night, until 2 am when he finally got someone at the Louisiana Nursing Home Association on the phone who said they would send a bus to come get us from Texas. We waited for the bus all day Wed and then night but finally one big bus with headlights in a pitch black city pulled up in front of our building at 8 pm with one lone driver to rescue us.\r\n\r\nAt that time we started lining up the patients in their jerry chairs and roller beds etc. on the sidewalk and the generator fuel ran out right after the last person came down on the elevator. Another miracle! A neigborhood woman across the street came over and wanted to help but saw how we could not even lift the first person on the bus. There were very few people left anymore in the building to assist by this time. She said wait one minute and left into the dark only to return with 4 men from the neighborhood, both black and white who then proceeded to load the bus for 3 hours of back breaking lifting of patients. Then they went back out into the night, just like they had come. We left for Sulfer, LA at midnight. At 5 am, we pulled up to our new nursing home, wondering how we were going to unload the patients, only to find a group of people who had volunteered standing waiting for us!\r\n\r\nMom and I spent the next 3 weeks sleeping on Dad\'s floor in the nursing home. People brought us clothes, took us home for showers, sent products for the patients etc. We had no phone, no car, no computers, no connection to what was going on and didn\'t even have the ability to watch what the rest of the world was seeing on TV. After the 3 weeks of chaos there, unbelievably, the next hurricane came straight for Sulfur, LA! We did the whole thing again only evacuating BEFORE the storm this time and there being 150 patients to move out! My father was moved 7 hours by ambulance to a nursing home in Providence, LA and we caught the ride too. There we lived 5 more weeks taking care of Dad in the chaos. \r\n\r\nThis is just a summary of all that we went through. I could write a book! At the end of October I came back by myself to N.O. after moving one more time to get closer to the city to a nursing home in Hammond. The day I got back, I found my pink slip in the mail - I was laid off.\r\n\r\nI cried every day for 6 months every time I turned the corner onto Claiborne Avenue and saw the water line of the area that was so familiar to me growing up in my childhood. Whew, I don\'t know how we ever got through it. It\'s hard to believe it\'s been 5 years.