By Lauren PondThe Daily NorthwesternMcCormick freshman Megan Adolph was saying good-bye to college-bound friends as Katrina approached. She returned to her home in the Jefferson Parish area of New Orleans, and her mother announced the family might leave the next morning on Saturday, Aug. 27, Adolph said.Her family always evacuates for storms that eventually dissipate, and Katrina seemed no different, she added. “I was just like, ‘This is so annoying. I hate hurricanes,'” Adolph said. Communication sophomore Nick Lalla was interning at National Endowment for the Arts in Washington, D.C., as Katrina approached his home in Algiers, an area of New Orleans, he said. More than a dozen first cousins and the rest of his extensive family didn’t consider leaving until the storm gained intensity, he said. Residents were used to warnings.”New Orleans gets so many scares it’s not even funny,” Lalla said. “It’s another hurricane.”And on the eve of the storm, Weinberg senior Rosa Nguyen was helping her brother move into his dorm room at Tulane University in New Orleans.”We went up there, moved all of his stuff into the dorm room, and suddenly, people were putting up signs saying, ‘Evacuate now; the whole university closes at 6 p.m.,'” she said.Northwestern students weren’t immune to the hurricane that authorities estimate killed hundreds and displaced more than a million people along the Gulf Coast on Aug. 29. Hurricane Katrina forced students to evacuate their hometowns and left several homeless. It left them aching for stability, they said. As they returned to NU this week, memories of the storm remained with them.EvacuationAdolph felt her mother tap her shoulder at 5 a.m. “[She] told me to get up to pack to leave,” she said. Katrina had turned toward them, and they had one hour to gather their belongings and start driving, Adolph said. Her mother grabbed a basket of water, flashlights and nonperishable food. Adolph said she was amazed at the speed of their departure.”It seemed like this hurricane just popped up,” she said. ” All at once – bam – you’re leaving.”Overnight, Adolph stayed in Baton Rouge, La., before driving to Houston, where the rest of her family, except Adolph’s father, joined them. Her father stayed for work reasons. Houston’s Galleria Mall was depressing, Adolph said. “You see things and you’re like, ‘Oh, I used to have that!'” she said.Lalla’s mother waited one more day than Adolph and her family to leave.By the time Lalla’s mother evacuated on Sunday, Aug. 28, it took her eight hours to drive 80 miles. Lalla tried to comfort his mother over the phone as she inched her way toward Atlanta with an overheating car, two cats, a dog and a dying cell phone battery, he said.Left BehindSome NU students’ family members didn’t escape immediately.Patients on life support could not be evacuated from Oschner Hospital, where Adolph’s father worked as a pediatric surgeon. He stayed to care for them.Water had damaged one generator, so the staff sacrificed air conditioning and used the other generator to keep patients alive, Adolph said.Adolph said she worried for her father’s safety.”I don’t care if everything’s ruined as long as my dad is okay,” she said.’Everything was so dead’When Adolph saw satellite images of her house, damage wasn’t obvious, she said. She could still see the deck. But Adolph returned to pick up salvageable items and found that the images had deceived her.”The reason you could see our deck was because it was floating,” she said. Wearing waist-high, waterproof waders, and with the stench of sewage in her nostrils, Adolph trudged through the syrupy, green water into her house, she said. Several feet of water had destroyed everything on the lower level, including baby photos and college supplies. She said she could feel pieces of debris, including shutters, under her feet.Adolph threw some tank tops and her North Face jacket into garbage bags and hauled them along train tracks to her car, parked a mile away. She said she envied her roommate, who was packing for NU. “My packing consisted of wading through water at my house to grab things,” she said.Nguyen and her family returned to grab necessities, including bath supplies and Nguyen’s textbooks.Houses had burned to the ground, she said. Fences had blown away. Signs that adorned some houses said, “Looters will be shot on sight.”Lalla viewed damage to his neighborhood online, he said.Looters had also hit Breaux Mart, a local grocery store. A policeman had been shot in the head at a Chevron gas station near Lalla’s house.Bullets had riddled Natco Food Service Merchants, the meat distributing business owned by Lalla’s family, his uncle told him.Lalla said he also watched as authorities placed 2,000-pound sandbags on one of the broken levees.”It looked like a tea bag in a bowl of water,” Lalla said.Hurricane Katrina also damaged parts of Mississippi and Alabama.Vicksburg, Miss. – Weinberg senior Sarah Louise Windham’s hometown – went without power for a week. Windham said the stench of unwashed clothes and rotting refrigerator contents wafted through the air. Winds had scattered tree branches and debris on her family’s lawn. The clean-up took three days.”It looked like fall had already happened here because of all the leaves and the branches, and everything was so dead,” she said.Searching for StabilityIt’s been almost three weeks since Hurricane Katrina tore NU students away from their homes, families and lives. Returning to school brought a support network and secure environment, they said.Knowing that she was going to NU in the fall comforted her, Adolph said.”It was like I knew I had something that would continue on,” she said. “I had somewhere to go.”Reach Lauren Pond at [email protected].