I was in New Orleans on August 26th and 27th. Here is how I remember how it was in New Orleans. On the 26th, I think a lot of people in NO wasn't really sure where the hurricane was going since all it did was kept goin west, even the weatherman on the local news channel wasn't even that sure. Everybody kept praying that maybe it could turn the other way around or somewhere.
When I woke up on saturday morning, I turned on the tv and we was still gettin the same results that it was goin west. All the gas stations was packed like usual. When the officials held their press conferences, it wasn't like they said hey its a mandatory evacuation and everybody get the

out. It was more like "hey theres a good chance that it might hit us but maybe not we're not sure but u can evacuate if u want to just in case". The rest of the press conferences was about givin instructions how to evacuate, giving shelter information, and they gonna activate contraflow at 4pm. Only 2 or 3 parishes had mandatory evacuations at that time but not NO yet. I don't remember hearing mandatory evacuation for jefferson parish until I was in Lafayette. I remember hearing from a local reporter that a lot of people didn't really evacuate till the hurricane changed directions.
Getting out of NO wasn't that big of a problem for us since the officials activated the contraflow which worked smoothly when we was on the road. Before evacuating NO, the mood was kinda depressing because it felt like we was bidding our goodbyes to our each other. I evacuated to Lafayette with some relatives. When I was in Lafayette, the hurricane finally started changing directions. I slept through most of Sunday so I don't know what was goin on that day, just that it became a catergory 5 hurricane. Monday, it was a real dark and windy day in Lafayette. After I figure the hurricane was over with. I went to my parents home which is about 80 miles away from Lafayette and 75 miles from New Orleans. I didn't really find out what happen to NO till wednesday when the tv cable started working. All of the local cable channels is out except for one local channel. Its real depressing seeing New Orleans in this shape. Never I could imagine this to happen even though we was taught in school that something like this is going to happen one day. I don't know about the rest of Metairie but all I know is the section I live in is not flooded. I didn't care much about losing my apartment since I just moved in a week before the hurricane hit us. I didn't have much in the apartment to begin with.
If you've been watching the news a lot lately, whenever u see them showing "I-10 and Causeway". You should recognize it easily because they're always showing the exit sign "Causeway BLVD North and Mandeville". My apartment is couple of blocks down on Causeway. Causeway is also the same bridge where hundreds of refugees is camping under away from the hot sun. It seems as if its the one of the place the rescue crew drop some of the refugees that they've rescued off at. Besides the convention center, the causeway has been gettin a lot of air time lately. Mostly because not much of them has been evacuated from that site. I only seen a couple of elderly people gettin evacuate from that site. Unless they took a shortcut from I-10, theres a possibily that the buses from Houston have passed by them everyday because you have to be on I-10 to get to the superdome.
On another topic, there is no communications at all in NO. Don't even bother calling anybody with a 504 number because 95% of the time you wont get through. The only affective way you'll contact somebody is by through text messaging. Everybody that I know of is fine and well. Some of the people I know is not even coming back to New Orleans since they lost everything. Well this is where i'm goin to end it for now. If anybody wants to donate then please give cash to the American Red Cross.