What Was Hurricane Katrina Like?

I am super late on making this, but I've wanted to type an account about my experience with Hurricane Katrina.  Ah...that day was one of the most scariest in my life.  It is one that I will not foget any time soon.  Hurricane Katrina was my very first major hurricane, and I had only been living in southern Mississippi for about a year when she came along.  Sure, before this storm I had to deal with tornadoes when I lived in Illinois and Ohio, and Tropical Storm Allison when I visited Mississippi earlier in life.  But Katrina was different.  My account may not be that good, and I may have missed a few things, but here goes nothing:

Ah...summer of 2005...I remember that year.  I was living with my grandmother at the time.  I heard TVXQ for the first time.  It was the beginning of my senior year of high school.  I hadn't been really paying any attention to the weather that year, but I had heard that it was going to be an active hurricane season.  Back in June or July, I remember my family cutting plywood boards to fit into the windows and such.  For most of the summer, they stayed up.  Then about one week after my birthday, one Friday towards the end of the school day, the intercom came on and started talking about a storm out in the Gulf of Mexico that may be headed our way and that we might not have school next week.  I wasn't really paying much attention to it though.  But when I got home, I could remember hearing talk about preparing for this storm.  It looked like we were going to ride this one out, so I figured it wasn't that bad of a storm.  I remember the previous year we had fled from Hurricane Ivan, but it luckly didn't do any damage to our area.  I can't really remember what all happened on that Saturday--it was most likely preparations and such.  But I do remember on Sunday morning that a call from the church we attended said that there would be no chruch so that people could have time to prepare.  Now...if your church calls saying that it's cancelled service so you can prepare for something does sound like something you should worry about.  Also, mandatory evacuations were being administered for the coastal areas of Louisiana and Mississippi.  I believe Alabama too, but I wasn't sure.  ^^;;  Other family members also came over to ride out the storm as well.  I do remember my grandomother saying that it would've been pointless to leave because this storm was big.  Here is a clip from The Weather Channel from about that time:

She was HUGE!  Not as huge as Hurricane Francis, but still rather big.  And like the guy in the video said...things weren't good.  She was regaining strength.  You see...whenever a storm enters the Gulf of Mexico's waters, it gets a charge.  ^_^  We have some of the warmest waters over here.  But that Sunday night, before we went to sleep, I remember my grandmother saying that we needed to fill the bathtubs with water.  She said we might need it for emergencies. 

AUGUST 29th, MONDAY MORNING....  It was about six or seven in the morning when I woke up to the sound of the wind whistling outside.  She had JUST made landfall when I had awoken.  At first, things didn't seem so bad.  But then, the lights started blinking and I heard my grandmother shout "Turn 'em off!".  So my dad shut off all the power from the fuse box.  Thank goodness there was light outside.  We all made our way into the living room area and sat on the floor.  I did try to look out the sliding door window at the rear of the house.  It was really windy and raining hard.  I could even see the roof of my grandomother's neighbor's house tearing apart.  Their house was more of an A-frame, and couldn't compare to a roof built more for a hurricane.  But since it was coming down, the neighbors managed to make it to our house through the sliding door.  Now our house was full of people (about 25 and that isn't counting the 3 dogs that were there as well).  So, things were alright for a while, we noticed some leaking coming from the den and other areas.  Then we heard the ceiling in my grandmother's bathroom fall.  We all know that it was time to go.  We were going to have to run down the street to a neighbor's house through the sliding door.  But before that, the whole ceiling to the kitchen came down.  We all freaked out!  That was when all of us evacuated the house through the back door and ran across the backyard, and between my grandmother's neighbor's side of the house and RV.  We had a little repreive from the wind as the RV provieded a little protection.  But as soon as we were out in the open on the streets...things were crazy!  The rain pounded down on us and we were soaked within seconds.  It felt like needles stabbing me everwhere because the wind was whipping the rain.  It was also hard to breathe because the wind was being literally knocked out of me.  We were screaming a bit as we made our way to a neighbor's house down the street.  I could remember trying to hold on to my brother because he was being blown away.  XD  Even after the storm a few neighbors were worried about us because they heard us screaming.  But we all managed to make it to the other neighbor's house.  The rest of the day, we rode out the storm with them.  My sister and I were worried about the safety of our dogs as we had to leave them behind. 

AUGUST 29th, MONDAY EVENING.... As the winds began to die down and Hurricane Katrina kept moving inland, some of the adults went back to our grandmother's house to see what had happened.  It was a while later when we were allowed to come back over that way.  What took so long was that the street was flooded from debris covering the drains.  In fact, debris was everywhere.  Shingles from the roof were on the ground.  One shingle was even stuck in someone's door!  Trees had fallen...the whole shebang.  It was going to be alot to clean up.  We went inside for a little while, and I was glad to know that our dogs were all still alive.  The ceiling in my grandmother's room and bathroom had a hole in it as well as the den.  The room we stayed in suprisingly didn't have any damage nor did our aunt's or our cousin's.  The living room was alright too.  The kitchen...well, like I said previously, the ceiling had fully collapsed.  Thank goodness the roof was still standing.  We couldn't stay at our grandmother's house that night, so we had to stay at our other aunt and cousin's houses for a few nights.

AFTERMATH OF KATRINA.... Oh geez.  The aftermath was terrible!  It was hot, we had no power or water for weeks.  Thus that was the reason for filling up the bathtub with water.  The first to come back on was the water.  Cleanup was a drag.  I didn't want to do it, but I needed to help.  The big problems were ice and gas though.  We had to make several trips to places outside of our city just to get gas.  Ah, and let't not forget the MREs.  School was out for about a month for me, and yet I still had projects that had to be turned in, lol.  I also remember going around and visiting other places that got hit hard (like Pass Christian).  It was spooky.  A whole Wal-Mart got gutted out.  In fact, alot of places near the beach got gutted by Katrina.  Lots of highways were out and there were many 'steps leading to nowhere'.  Heck, even the barges carrying some of our casinos had washed ashore!  o.O  Of course, you all may have heard about the disaster in New Orleans, but Mississppi also had it's share of problems since we had to deal with the eye-wall and the hurricane-force winds the whole time.  To sum it all up, we were all severely messed up from this storm. 



Katrina damage

Steps leading to nowhere

These were parts of casinos that washed ashore

Over time, however things got better.  Help arrived (allbeit a bit late) and lives were being pieced back together.  My immediate family and I moved out of our grandmother's house to live in the one I currently do.  All the seniors (including myself) managed to get back on track and we all graduated on time.  You can still see some of the effects of Hurricane Katrina today, but it's slowly dwindling.  If anything, I really do hope that I won't have to go through anything like Hurricane Katrina ever again. 

If you want to learn more about this storm, take a look at these sites:
Wikipedia-Hurricane Katrina
Wikipedia-Effects of Hurricane Katrina in Mississippi