How Hurricane Katrina Has Changed My Life

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On Losing Everything
Being in the middle of one of the worst hurricanes our nation has ever seen, has changed my life. Hurricane Katrina tore through the Gulf Coast in August 2005, and I remember it like it was yesterday. My family and I were living in southern Louisiana, in a town called St. Amant, a small town of Cajun people about an hour west from New Orleans. My neighbors and my family were gathering and stocking up on resources, a way of taking care of each other in preparation for the worst. My family was devastated by this natural disaster and our bonds with each other and the strength of our family were tested. I want to share how losing everything can tear a family apart and how hard it is to pickup the pieces.
The days before the hurricane, our community was bracing for impact. I mean, Katrina was not the first hurricane we had ever experienced, we would get at least one every year. So far in 2005, we had already been hit by another strong storm named Hurricane Rita. From my recollection, the time in between these storms was less than a month, so people’s supplies were already dwindling. The news …show more content…
My family and I woke the next morning to almost all of the pine trees scattered around like a game of pick-up sticks. Our house was a cabin-style house and in true Gulf Coast style, it sat upon stilts that kept it about seven feet off the ground, the purpose of these stilts being to prevent your house from capsizing like a ship at sea. Our house sat right on Black Bayou, a murky brown river filled with alligators and snapping turtles. At this point, it was not required for houses in our Parish to be built this way, a few families in the neighborhood had already lost their homes in the floods of the Bayou. The whole town underestimated what was about to come our way, and my family was not prepared for what was to

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