New Orleans and remembering today

[evemac]

It's hard to believe it's been 20 years. Keeping New Orleanians and other Gulf Coasters close to my heart today.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nola.com/news/katrina/chris-rose-katrina-anniversary-new-orleans/article_4d30122c-7535-4b46-97ce-89570855fe44.amp.html

[marble falls]

1. I remember the federal weather warnings and I thought they were over the top and possibly panic causing ...

... then the storm hit. And if anything, they understated it. Katrina was inconceivable nightmare.

[Haggard Celine]

2. That was a hell of a time.

I went with my family to Memphis to stay with our crazy relatives. We watched Fox News as the storm came in, but they didn't talk much about the Mississippi coast. They were in New Orleans, mostly. They thought New Orleans was going to be spared at first, but then the flooding started. The storm actually came ashore in Pass Christian, Miss., much like Camille 36 years before then.

We spent about a week with those relatives and decided we'd been in exile long enough, so we got in our cars and headed south. They turned us around below Hattiesburg, roughly 100 miles from home. The man told us that there was nothing left down there, which scared the hell out of us, and there was nowhere to buy gas to get back to Memphis. So my parents decided we would look up some old friends of theirs around Laurel, about 30 miles from Hattiesburg. They were very nice and took us in and fed us. That area had also received a lot of damage, which blew our minds. We thought they would be unaffected, but they didn't even have power.

So the next morning my dad and his friend took his 55 gallon drum and headed to Meridian because they heard there was gas there. The man at the station they found didn't want to let them have that much gas, but they explained the situation and he relented. They came back and filled up our cars and we went back to Memphis.

We were there for another day or two when they announced that the way was clear to get back to Gulfport. Fortunately I didn't get any damage and my parents got some light damage to their house. But when we rode down the beach, we were stunned. There was very little left down there. We couldn't even figure out where we were some of the time because there weren't many landmarks or street signs left. It was like Hiroshima.

There were many people who lost everything they had and some were without power for months! And it was still hot as hell. I hope I never see another one like that. If we have a repeat of that, I'm leaving and I won't be back.