Personal Narrative: A Personal Experience Of Hurricane Katrina

29th August is the exact date the Katrina hit my home town in New Orleans. After the catastrophic incident, it was obvious that we needed more help than we were getting. I am a driver of a 15 passenger that belongs to my church. My church made the van available and was also willing to provide supplies to help the relief victims. 2nd September, it was completely impossible to communicate. I left a message at catholic social services that my church had a van and was willing to provide some vital supplies to help the Katrina victims. I drove to Red Cross offices since I couldn’t get them on the phone and made the van available to them in case they needed any assistance. However a woman informed me that Red Cross had all the supplies and so they only needed to use my van for transport, so my church did not have to purchase anything.
Catholic social services called me from my office after I got back from Red Cross. They told me that a family in New Orleans had made to shelter
that had been put up in Thibodaux. The family had relatives living in Atlanta but they had no way of getting to them. Since I was going with the Red Cross convoy I promised to bring them from the shelter when I got back. Late that afternoon I was supposed to join the Red Cross convoy I drove to their offices since I had heard nothing from them. I spoke with the same person I had spoken to earlier who informed me that the convoy was leaving the following Monday and they did not know anything else (Benoit, 2012).
Saturday morning, I went to a local store and bought all the supplies the woman in Thibodaux had said the victims needed and drove there.
Luckily, my van had a 500 plus cruising range otherwise I wouldn’t have made it there in time. There were long queues in gas stations of people who wanted to fuel their vehicles and most of the gas stations on the way to Thibodaux did not have any fuel. I arrived to Thibodaux at 11:30 PM. The situation here was not pleasing at all. There were about 300 people in a small gym and about 500 in the new gym at the Nicholas state university. Most of them were on mattresses, cots, blankets, and some attempting to sleep on the gym floor and more people were still coming in. I saw huge a city bus parked in the university parking lot. A man had loaded it with people and drove to the university. The people I had promised to transport had arrived in two cars that had their windows blown. They had covered the windows with plastic sheeting and duck tape (Tarshis et al,
2011).
I helped set up more tents in the university parking lot and arranged all the food and water supplies that had come from the catholic archdiocese, and volunteers. Red Cross had not communicated to them. At around two AM in the morning I was served a [plate of hot rice and ham and white beans by one of the volunteers. I slept on the DFCS manger’s couch. Sunday morning we loaded the van with a 2 year old boy, his brother who was about 4 years of age, their mother, who was about eight months pregnant and nine other women. These people had only a few personal items, and salvaged clothes. We began our journey in search of better shelters.