The year is 2005. I had just turned 15 years old and was starting my sophomore year of high school. It was mid-September. My parents had just finally finished construction on a huge, gorgeous, new house on their rural property about 20 miles northwest of Houston. https://twitter.com/KendraWrites/status/1304239944332988417

We'd just moved the bulk of our stuff from the old house to the new one, but were still very much not unpacked.

The country (especially the Gulf Coast) was still reeling in a lot of ways from Hurricane Katrina 3 weeks earlier. A lot of Hurricane Katrina refugees had come to Houston and many would stay for a year or more (some forever).

My small high school had several new students who were Katrina refugees. Without comprehending the full scale of the disaster, we all knew Katrina had been horrible and were terrified of Houston being similarly struck. Most remembered the destruction of TS Allison in 2001.

And then we have it. A Category 5 storm called Rita headed straight for Galveston and Houston.

I think in most other years, way less people would've tried to evacuate, but the memory of Katrina was fresh, this was a Cat 5, and Houston is a city built on a swamp at/below sea level that has been thoroughly paved, which are ideal conditions for flooding.

Now, my family lives in a town called Tomball which happens to be in the highest area of Harris County (at a whopping 250 feet or so above sea level).

[side note- I thought we lived on a huge hill growing up because everything else in Houston is so flat- it's not a big hill]

So we're lucky. We don't have to really worry about flooding and we're far enough inland to not need to evacuate.

But the rest of the city started evacuating and basically all at once (despite public officials trying to stagger evacuations in some useful way and zone people to different evacuation routes).

The city of Houston has over 2 million people. In 2005, the greater metro area had around 5.7 million people. That equaled a lot of traffic.

And this is where all those weird disaster sequelae really start.

Because the thing about that many people evacuating at once is it leads to terrible traffic and long lines for gas and stations running out of gas.

So on a normal day a quarter of a tank should get you out of Houston and to Waller or somewhere else no problem.

Maybe you think "I should fill up" on the way out, but then you see the line at the gas station would be 1-2 hours and you think "it can wait" or the station is straight up out of gas.

Now a lot of people make the same calculation and some non-zero percentage of those people run out of gas on the drive, especially since you're going 10-20 mph on the freeway instead of the speed limit.

Well when cars start running out of gas on congested freeways, 10-20 mph quickly turns to 0-5 mph. This becomes a positive feedback loop resulting in slower and slower traffic until basically every road is at a standstill.

My brother, cousin, and I drove a 4-wheeler down our road to FM 2920 and saw just a huge standstill. The gas station at the corner was out of gas and water and cash.

Now a thing about my mom is she's a hydration machine like myself, and she basically only drinks bottled water (I KNOW I KNOW... that is not the point of this story). But suffice it to say we had a lot of bottled water on reserve at our house.

So bro, cuz, and I end up filling a cooler with ice and bottled water and just go to the end of the road to pass out to strangers stuck in traffic in high heat on this Farm to Market road.

While this is happening, one of my dad's coworkers calls in a panic and explains that they've been on the road with 5 kids for 7 hours and are a few miles from our house and could they just stay with us for the night (they normally live about 45 minutes to an hour from us).

He and my mom say sure, we've got lots of room but not much furniture, but they can ride the storm out with us.

I don't know if word got out from there, or just a lot more coworkers realized they were close to our house, or what.

But within an hour or two, the first family had turned into like 3 more families and a few singletons who were all now abandoning their original evacuation plans and now just crashing with us.

So that's how the first weekend in my parents new house we had about 25 people stay there as opposed to the four of us.

It turned into a fun party thing (the hurricane wasn't that bad in Houston and definitely not where we are). There were lots of kids, we had a swimming pool, dad got donuts one morning, mom cooked a huge breakfast the next.

A family of 7 was sleeping in my room (their 3 year old slept on the floor in my closet and apparently for a long time after any time they stayed at a new house she thought she should sleep in the closet of her parent's room).

My brother and I slept in the landing area between our rooms. I woke up one morning to a two year old pointing at my dog's penis and asking "is that his penis?"

That boy's mom became violently ill to the point of not being able to hold down anything the first night, so her husband took her to the ER while our big Rita family watched their two sons.

They returned from the hospital with news that she had been diagnosed with hyperemesis gravidarum. So she and EVERYONE ELSE IN THE HOUSE learned about her pregnancy that was definitely a surprise.

To this day, their daughter will probably never be able to escape that story because we all remember finding out that she was in utero.

I just remember what a wild ride the whole thing was. For a lot of people, the biggest disaster was actually a result of the evacuation and getting trapped on the roads.

We were lucky to be able to stay place and offer refuge (and some joy) to these people who had been stuck on the road for hours and were otherwise SOL (hotels had no vacancies so you just needed to keep driving, but you couldn't get gas, so there was no way to keep driving).

Community is always powerful and important, but it's especially so during a disaster. I was really happy to see that point made during this week's @how2saveaplanet

Community will look different depending where you are and what the disaster is, but if you need help try to find a community that can offer it.

If you can offer help, you should do it. We're better off when we come together and take care of each other.

Fin.