Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Katrina–Looking back 6 years…

Many years ago a hurricane was brewing in the gulf. I did not pay much attention to it as we did not know it’s track. On a Friday, I packed up a small bag of things and headed to Baton Rouge to go out with Ashley. I brought 2 changes of clothes, makeup and my flat iron. That was it. I arrived in Baton Rouge and we went out. We got in late and went to bed without looking at the news.

That next morning, our mom woke us up asking if we were coming home to evacuate. There was no way to get back into Nola with full evacuation already happening of the city. We packed up a few things for Ashley and went to Hammond. The roads were packed. It was like nothing I had seen before. The following day we packed 30 people into my parents house and were ready for a party like Ivan. (Ivan was a huge threat, but at the last minute it went to our east and we barely got any rain. It was a true hurricane party.)

The evacuees in my house included all my dad’s family: my aunts and their families, Sarah and her mom and a few other random boyfriends. They evacuated from New Orleans and Slidell.

Monday the storm hit. It was fun at first as you can see from the photos.

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Then trees started falling. Many fell around my parents house. One fell on it and one fell on my brothers car.

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After the storm, we cleaned the yard, picked up fallen down trees. My dad WALKED to work – (That is a story worthy of its own blog post). Things appeared to be fine in Nola. We knew Slidell was probably flooded, but it appeared Nola was fine. Until the levees broke. We started getting video of Lakeview, which is where one of my aunt’s lived. All in all, everyone who had evacuated to our house, lost their house.

Things in New Orleans got tense and I think you know the rest of the story.

A few weeks later we went to clean my aunts house in Slidell. Even though there was total destruction, we seemed to have fun…

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(Andrew being Gina…)Ginakatrina 079

Clearly, I am showing the “light” side of the event we refer to as “the storm”. While it was completely devastating, there were a lot of funny moments and I am glad I could share just a few of those with you.

Love and Hugs, Lizzie

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