Seth Tagert
Block 5
Mr. Kimbrough
AP English 11
Descriptive Essay
On August 29, 2005, there was a hurricane forming in the Gulf of Mexico. Her name was Katrina. It started as a small tropical storm, but as it entered the warm waters of the Gulf, it grew to be a monstrous storm. So monstrous, that it would destroy anything in its path.
As soon as the people of Mobile, Alabama and surrounding cities heard that she was heading their way, they either did one of two things. They either stayed at their homes or local shelters, or they could flee from the hurricane. If a family fled they took the chance of possibly getting caught in traffic on the interstate.
My family was one of the many families that stayed. The day before Katrina hit, my family and I went and made our beds at my grandparent’s house. I can remember the ominous clouds looking at me with destruction in its eyes. The sight of it made me shiver. My mother reassured me that all would be well. Even with my mother giving me confidence, I still felt like the blustering wind and rain would destroy my grandparent’s house, and my family and I would be engulfed in her dark clouds.
Katrina was slowly creeping up on the Gulf Coast. My worst fears were coming true. As she came nearer and nearer, the shingles started to rip off of my grandpa’s house. As the shingles were violently ripped off, water started to come into his dining and living room. I remember thinking that the roof was going to fly off at any moment. After hundreds of shingles flew of the roof, I started hearing a sound in the attic. It sounded like the little drummer boy tapping on his drums. My dad crept into the attic and found that one of the rafters had cracked in half resulting in the tapping noise. As soon as I found out this information, I went into my bedroom and started praying.
When I was finished praying in my bedroom, I looked through the tiny hole in the wood that was covering my window. As I peered through the hole, I saw our trampoline fly over our house like a witch on Halloween. The trampoline soared over our cars and landed like a butterfly on top of the lamp in my front yard. This was the one event in Katrina that I found fascinating.
After several hours of roaring wind, Katrina finally calmed down. I was relieved that the storm was over, but when I walked outside, the damage was dreadful. There were fallen trees, missing shingles, and missing vinyl off of our house. I knew that through the next few days, we would be cleaning up the damage. With no power, this was not a fun thing to do.
Several weeks passed and clean up continued in our community. Life was slowly getting back to normal. School had started back ,and people returned to work. After six years of constant clean up, the Gulf Coast is slowly getting back to the way it was before this devilish hurricane impacted our shores.
