All the agencies knew it would be bad enough that they should have planned better and responded quicker.

We hadn't planned to come to New Orleans but when the call went out, we responded in force.

I knew Juan Pablo was quicker,

We did not expect it to be catastrophic. I expected to come back to a mess, maybe our furniture and clothes would be all wet, then we thought maybe the worst was that the house would be gutted.

Our county is the one next to Louisiana and our county is ground zero where Katrina actually made landfall. Our house was about 7 miles northeast of ground zero, which is not the place to be. The northeast quadrant of a hurricane is always the worst where you have the biggest cluster of tornadoes and after taking pictures (of their house) we were pretty sure that's what went through our neighborhood.

That's when we realized how fortunate we really were because between my family and his and people who put us up, all of our needs have been met. It's a huge blessing.