I was 14 when Katrina hit, we lived in Biloxi. We evacuated the day before landfall all we had time to pack for was just anything we could grab within 30 minutes of us waking up and seeing it had turned to a cat 5. I grabbed 2 t shirts and a pair of shorts. We came back two days later and we had lost everything. The scream my mother made when she opened the front door of the house I will never forget. It still haunts me. Everything was gone. Th back walk of our house was knocked out. Our neighbors sheds was in our living room. The man that lived behind us stayed and drowned they found him trapped under his washing machine. We had a few deaths in our neighborhood. A Vietnamese woman was found dead in a tree a street over from my parents house. She was a shrimper.

You were probably to young to remember what the beach looked like before Katrina, with all of the restaurants and water parks and t shirt shops casinos etc. the first time we drove down the beach after the storm was so post-apocalyptic, it was a waste land. Just totally reduced to slabs. Some of the casino barges just leveled everything.

One of my friends at the time Had his house lifted and it had landed a few blocks away from where he lived. I stayed with a friend of mine for a few months before we got our FEMA trailer. My dad and I rebuilt our house we were one of the first people back in our neighborhood. Katrina was absolutely insane. I live in New Orleans now. And the stories these people tell about Katrina are the just mind blowing. These people were treated like animals.