15 Years

I evacuated for Hurricane Katrina 15 years ago tomorrow.

15 years ago tonight, I was still packing to move and watching movies and chatting with my neighbors, not taking anything seriously because the storm was supposed to be a Florida storm.

15 years ago tomorrow morning, I stayed in bed until noon procrastinating, and watched the movie Independence Day. Then the calls started coming. This was before texting. Katrina taught us all how to text.

I had old dial-up internet that was insanely slow and expensive, but I had a cheap computer because I was going back to school. Once my friend from Scotland called and told me I should leave, I realized it was a more serious matter than it was being considered locally. I got on the computer and used hotwire.com to get a hotel room in Meridian, MS for the night, just to be safe. It was far enough away to be out of the traffic jams if there were a mandatory evacuation, but close enough that I could chill in the hotel for 2 days and come home if the storm turned.

15 years ago tomorrow evening, I walked to the front of the apartments where I lived and the neighbors were grilling steaks to clear out the freezer in case we lost power. They encouraged me to stay and relax, it wouldn't be that bad and I could leave tomorrow. I don't think I remotely understood what was to come but I knew I had promised my friend in Scotland, and I had promised my parents, so I had to go.

15 years ago tomorrow, I packed my cat, my car, my computer, and a small duffel bag full of clothes, some important papers & photographs, and that was it. I fully intended to be back in a week and at least get my things. It was August 27th. I didn't come back until mid October. And I never got my things.

I was 26 years old and those were the last moments of a life that I would never again have.

I heard that they'd opened up contraflow, so I was able to drive on the wrong side of the highway for a hundred miles or so. I thought that was pretty cool.

I drove to the Motel 6 in Meridian, where I'd slept in the parking lot the year prior after being stuck in 14 hours of hot, miserable, gridlocked evacuation traffic. I wasn't going to go through that again, which is why I booked the hotel before the evacuation orders. I got some fast food drive through for dinner, checked in, brought the cat in the room, and turned on the TV. Still vague info about the storm but nothing big.

When I woke up the next morning the mayor's face was on TV. He was ordering the mandatory evacuation and people were talking about bringing an axe into the attic if you stayed to you can hack your way out when the water rose. That was the first moment of a chronic feeling of sick unease I would feel for months. I remember driving toward my friend's house in TN outside of Nashville and just suddenly erupting in tear because it hit me that my life as I knew it was over. I knew then it would never be the same. I got to Caroline's house that night and we cracked open some wine and turned on the news, as the weather in New Orleans started to get worse and we settled in to watch what was going to happen. I think I slept that night. It was one of the last nights I slept well for quite a while.

We woke up to crazy scenes of storming in Louisiana and on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. I was still weighing whether it was something I could go home to but then--the reports came of a broken levee and water pouring into the city. It just got worse from there. We took some breaks from the TV to go to the store for groceries and wine, or to cook something. Or to just sit outside and not talk while we all absorbed it.

The next day we started to see arial footage of the city and it was obvious that we weren't going home. They told us that colleges were offering refuge to students displaced by the storm. I had just seen my office door on CNN with 5 feet of water, and I knew that job would be gone. I was in school at UNO, so I thought maybe I could turn this into something good and I called my childhood dream school, Yale, and they indeed had a program for Katrina students. But the enrollment was ending and I needed to get up there.

The next morning I just started driving north.

I headed to South Carolina to another friend's house for a two-night stay while I got my details in order for Yale and wrote an application essay in pencil on a fax paper at a Kinko's because Kinko's was offering free faxing to people with Louisiana licenses. My friend took me to the Dollar Store and bought me socks and pajamas. Because I realized I didn't pack any socks, so therefore I no longer owned socks.

Yale called me that afternoon and said I had to make it up there in 36 hours or it would be too late. So the next morning, I drove. I had a tire blowout and a kind man at a tire shop somewhere along the way helped me out. I kept driving.

I made it to Yale admissions with about 35 minutes to spare and secured my spot. I'd be starting classes the next day. I was already a week late, so I'd have to catch up. They had me take an ID photo. My poor cat was still sitting in my car waiting for me. All of it was such a shock and a blur; I barely remember anything but that I picked out Cognitive Science and Chaucer and a few other classes.

I drove an hour to my grandmother's house and saw my parents and my grandmother. I think I slept that night, too.

These last few says, I was texting (totally new to me) and occasionally speaking with my sometimes ex-boyfriend, who was working as a paramedic throughout everything. For some reason, his phone didn't connect to any other person but mine, so I was relaying info to his family as best I could, and and every conversation with him broke me a little. His spirit was being crushed by the enormity of it all, and I could hear it over the line. He never recovered, and would only survive for another 4 and a half years.

The next few days would be consumed trying to start school at Yale, find an apartment, deal with FEMA, and track down missing friends--a more difficult feat before social media.

Another thing I missed: the Katrina footage. I never saw the hours of coverage of people drowning or abandoned on buildings. The last pictures of Katrina I saw were about 36 hours after the storm when it was still just storm and not the horrific aftermath of the levee failures and of people being abandoned at the convention center and the Superdome.

I have never watched that footage. When the Spike Lee film came out, I thought maybe I'd watch it on an anniversary or something, but I haven't been able to bring myself to watch it.

15 years later, I'm reliving all of this and leaving out so many people and details, because as we speak, the people of SWLA (southwest Louisiana) are feeling the beginnings of Hurricane Laura, and my heart is breaking for them.

When I saw this one on the map a week ago, I had that sick feeling. This one is a beast, and I know that people will die tonight, and that communities will be destroyed tonight, and that some 26 year old is probably watching it happen at her evacuation friends' right now, drinking wine while the world as she knows it is being swept away in a matter of hours. And it's breaking my heart all over again.