Five Years Ago Today

[dreamflower]

It was five years ago today that Hurricane Katrina changed life forever for those of us who lived on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi and Louisiana. My family was lucky. Our home was mostly intact, and no one in our family was injured or killed. There were a great many people who were not so lucky. My sister-in-law lost everything except her cat and clothes on her back. I had many friends who were "slabbed" (nothing left of their home except a concrete slab) or whose homes flooded out and whose insurance companies refused to pay.

My husband, who had to be in the thick of the storm due to his job as a nurse, could not bear to stay on the Coast after all he'd seen, which is why we are now in Oklahoma. That storm changed a lot of lives, and not for the better.

	Before The view out the front door before Katrina
	The view out my front door The view out my front door the day after the hurricane.

I know that I have some people who are new to my flist, and have never seen My Hurricane Katrina Diary that I kept in the powerless and internetless days immediately after the storm.

In previous years I'd posted links to the pictures I had taken after the storm. But I recently discovered that some of those links are broken, as that photobucket account is no longer available.

So I have uploaded those pictures into an LJ scrapbook:
Hurricane Katrina scrapbook

I know there are a lot more dramatic and devestating pictures out there, but these are pictures I took myself.

Five years later, there are still people displaced by Katrina, and the Coast, still trying to recover, has been traumatized by another, man-made disaster.

I hope everyone remembers those who suffered from Katrina and other storms in their thoughts and prayers today!