One year ago, Hurricane Rita slammed into the Texas-Louisiana Gulf Coast and rocked my world. Most media outlets covering the anniversary of Hurricane Rita are focusing on the recovery efforts--very much ongoing in most places.Today, instead, I find it therapeutic to revisit my memories of Rita's aftermath. I can still hear the roaring wind and rain of that night; it went on and on and on for many hours. I could hear the roof groaning under the strain. I slept about 2 hours, sure that the next massive gusts would take it off. But ever-so-gradually the wind slacked up, and weak daylight struggled through the cloud cover, and this is what we saw:
We chose not to evacuate. And as bad as things were for us without power for seven days, we considered ourselves lucky--we never lost our running water or phone service.
And, all of the trees that fell missed the house. Others were not so lucky.
This contractor's trailer
flipped.
A storage shed. Everything
inside was intact. The walls
were just peeled off.
The (formerly) covered stage
at our local park.
This storm was "forgotten" by the national media outlets. Today, I choose not to forget.
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