Life Changing Experience

There has been one experience that I can remember where my survival was literally at stake. It was in August of 2005. That was the time Hurricane Katrina made landfall in Louisiana, demolishing the city of New Orleans and surrounding areas. I’m from a small town, which is approximately twenty minutes outside of New Orleans. The hurricane affected my family both mentally and physically. My family didn’t evacuate for Hurricane Katrina. We decided to stay and “Ride it out.” They had the mindset like many others that the hurricane wouldn’t be as catastrophic, but we were wrong. We were without light, water, and had very little food for several days. One of the most terrifying things I can remember most was living in a house without electricity. Electricity is vital especially when you’re home is totally electric. That means we couldn’t cook, turn on the television or any other electronics. As a youngster of age 14, with an upcoming social media, I couldn’t do much or communicate with family or friends. This was one of the hardest situations for me. Like every other teen, my cellphone, computer, and video game meant everything to me. Being without my electronics and the electricity was tough. If it wasn’t for non-perishable foods, I don’t know how we would have been able to survive. This is because of our stove being completely electric. On top of that, we didn’t have cool air in one of the hottest months of the year, so therefore we had to take on the risk of practically sleeping with our windows up and sometimes with our door open. Can you imagine living with sunlight by day and candles by night? I had never encountered as experience as such. Without the knowledge of how tragic this storm would be, our preparation wasn’t as great. In preparation for Hurricane Katrina, we went to the store and stocked up mostly on things such as water, bread, some can goods, sliced ham and candles. We had a good bit of things already home that we figured we would come in