I remember the mayhem and fear that Katrina left in its wake throughout Louisiana, along with the destruction. It cast a long shadow, reaching my own hometown, Lake Charles, and the aftermath made a strong argument for evacuation in the hurricanes that followed. I'm from Southwest Louisiana, so the most I knew of Katrina in the 8th grade were horror stories of people waiting to be picked up from flooded houses and rooftops and the endless incompetence of FEMA. The storm itself glanced off of us so my family didn't evacuate. Up until that point, we usually did not feel threatened by the hurricanes, not in the same way that New Orleanians would feel.

Rita was a different matter. My family was quick to haul out of the Lake Charles area before it struck, fearing a disaster comparable to Katrina. We went up to Natchitoches in Northern Louisiana and ended up stuck there for over a month. What at first seemed like a lighthearted hurrication with family quickly turned into a nightmare. Along with out-staying our welcome, we were stuck in claustrophobic, humid darkness for at least 2 weeks with my uncle's family and other relatives that had evacuated to stay with them. The rain still hit, bringing strong winds and felled trees with it. We brought my family dog with us, and he went stir crazy and managed to escape from the house at one point. He wandered out onto the road and got hit by a car while I was at school. We were very afraid he wouldn't make it. My parents rushed him to the vet just in time. That was terrifying for me, and it didn't help that I was already stressed about being forced to go to a local Catholic school to avoid getting behind, unable to see or talk to my friends and cooped up with my cousin, who I was sharing a room with and often got into petty fights with throughout our stay. Lock a couple of preteen girls in a house together with no school and (often) no electricity, and you've got a recipe for disaster. We just kept coming up with more and more creative ways of getting on each other's nerves. It was anything but a fun-filled hurrication, and most of it, I've tried to forget.

On the bright side, our house lost nothing more than a few shingles here and there, and of course, the electricity was down. That just made the torture we went through--far from unaffected by the hurricane despite our evacuation--seem even less worth it.