Looking Back At Katrina

As most of you know it was 5 years ago this week that Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. I thought I'd pull out some old photos of that time in our lives. Ben was about 1 1/2 at the time. It's hard for me to remember him so little.


Here's a photo of Jackie and Judd when they came to visit us. This photo was taken about a week before the hurricane hit. That was when New Orleans was still New Orleans.


Here's a shot of Ben helping me out as we begin to pack some belongings to take with us during our Katrina evacuation. This was about 5 days before we left. Other than clothes we mainly ended up taking with us photographs.


These next shots are of Ben playing at the park. These were taken about 2 days before we left. I remember wanting to get my mind off of the storm. Yet despite everyone's worries most people figured the storm would pass to the east and miss the city. Things were still optimistic.



Here's Ben picking out which books to take with us.


Here we are in Texas spending time with family while the hurricane moves closer to New Orleans.


A week after Katrina I drove down to check out the neighborhood and the damages to our house. When I drove into our neighborhood I came across this sign at the end of our street. By the way, our neighborhood never experienced any vandalism or looting.


This was our house. By sheer luck our house and neighborhood experienced "tropical storm force winds," and not "hurricane force." Thanks to that our house came out great considering. We ended up having to replace the roof, and we lost a few trees, but the house inside was dry and the windows were intact. Like I said...we were lucky.


This was how our street looked a week after the storm. Like I said above...we all came out great considering. Most of these homes (including ours) were all back to 100% within a few months. What helped our neighborhood was the fact we weren't near any major canals that led to Lake Ponchatrain.


This is the neighborhood of Kenner, which was only 10 minutes east of us...and therefore 10 minutes closer to the eye of the storm. Kenner also experienced "tropical storm force winds" but they were also near a major canal that led to the lake. That canal ended up breaching and the water poured into these neighborhoods.


Lastly, some of you will remember Jenny and I had donations mailed to us from family and friends out of state...which we then delivered to relief centers around the city. Here was one of many carfuls.