Personal Narrative: Hurricane Katrina

I was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, a city whose history is rich and whose food is richer. My grandparents and their parents all lived enchanting lives in the Crescent City. As a young girl, I always imagined what it would be like to spend my teenage years baton twirling in Mardi Gras parades with my high school marching band just as my mom did. I rode my bike around the flat city, void of hills. I visited with my grandparents on weekends while they took me to second lines and jazz festivals. I loved the city I was growing up in but I failed to appreciate it until I was faced with a hasty departure.
We all remember the American Natural Disaster known as Hurricane Katrina which took place in August of 2005. Some remember hearing tales from local survivors, reading accounts published in the media, or simply by watching the news. However I remember, from the personal account of a nine year old child. I can recall exactly what my mom and I had planed on the day before the storm hit. We did some grocery shopping, then my mom planned to take me to Audubon Zoo, so that I could play on Monkey Hill (one of the city’s two man-made hills). When we arrived at the zoo, we found it to be closed for inclement weather. Most would take this a sign to get out of town, but after spending years of false alarms, my family decided to stay in the comfort of our home, until of course it was no longer comfortable, but flooded with water three feet deep in our living room.

Late into the night, around 2 AM we were awoken when our power clicked off. My mother found an old battery operated radio and tuned it to a local weather channel and heard that people were being told that evacuation was critical. After a peek out of the door to our car which whose tires were no longer visible due to the depth of the flooding, we realised that evacuation had been eliminated as an option for