Oh my God, Hurricane Rita is now a category 5 hurricane and it is headed straight at my family in Louisiana. They live eight feet above sea level. I just got an email and some photos from my aunt who was trying to decide whether to evacuate. There are thousands of refugees in the town who will also have to evacuate, and everyone is harboring evacuee families, friends and relatives. I hope they leave now. The hurricane is moving so fast, and it's so huge.
My very earliest memory was of being boarded into my grandfather's house (because it was the only two-story one) for two days with 20 other people while Hurricane Audrey howled outside and huge trees fell. Five hundred people in Cameron were killed overnight in that one, which never makes the list of worst hurricanes because they were poor. My mother was a volunteer public health nurse then and took me south to see Cameron, which had been wiped out. The road just ran straight into the sea, there was no town, through an empty marsh littered with roofs and dead cows.
I hope your family is alright. It is unthinkable to me that this is happening, considering all that the people in this region have already been through.
Posted by: Sammy | 22 September 2005 at 12:36