Monday

The hurricane talk started almost as soon as I hopped out of the airport shuttle that evening.

"You're back!" Said the guy at the hostel desk, who'd checked me out 3 1/2 weeks earlier. "Just in time for the storm."

Tuesday

By morning, "the storm" had a name, Gustav. No one seemed to take it seriously yet - "It's way too soon to tell," or "It could still change direction" - but people toyed with the idea of its arrival, tasted it, almost enjoying the tension as they said, "I'm riding this one out just like all the others" or "Category 3 or higher, and I'm getting the fuck out of dodge."

I decided to wait and see, and to re-assess the situation by the weekend. After all, weren't the Katrina commemorations, scheduled throughout Friday, part of the reason I had come to town?

Wednesday

The next afternoon I took a walk, down Canal Street and into the Quarter, and everywhere I went I knew people were talking about Gustav. Most times, they didn't even need to say his name - though by now, everyone who used it did so with a familiarity, like a family member or a friend. "He's coming to town, no matter what," one man might say. "Yeah, he'll be here sooner or later," another would agree.

Thursday

There was still no change in "his" projected trajectory, and people were no longer day dreaming their escape plans, trying them on for size. Now, they were talking concrete details. I went drinking that afternoon - it seemed like the most sensible option - and as the afternoon rolled blurrily into the night and then morning I listened to my companions talk specifics. "I filled up on gas this morning, might leave tomorrow before the traffic gets too bad." "My parents said, the more the merrier up in Hattiesburg." "We should all caravan out together." On the way home, with the sun already peeking out, I spotted the residents of a retirement community being loaded onto buses.

Friday

On Friday morning - okay, Friday noon, by the time I'd dragged myself downstairs to the hostel desk to ask - I learned that nearly all the commemorative events planned for the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina had been canceled. Great. One article down - and Gustav, a "he" that I'd only flirted with a few days earlier, was becoming all too real.

Panic began to set in late Friday afternoon. First, we learned that Greyhound and Amtrak were shutting down their NOLA operations. Then, I called Air Canada and was told that because I'd booked on points, I wasn't authorized to alter my itinerary until the airline decided that the emergency was well and truly under way. "The president says its an emergency," I said, pointing out that the National Guard was already pouring into town. "I'm sorry," said the woman on the phone. "There's nothing I can do for you yet."

"So basically, you can't help me until I'm already screwed?" I asked, rhetorically, before slamming down the phone.

I should probably note that I've been in a hurricane situation before. In my third year of college, a Category 2 storm slammed into Halifax, Nova Scotia, and my roommates and I stayed up all night listening to the trees cracking and whipping against the window panes, the old house creaking. We woke up to a newly cleared ocean view, a street full of shredded wood, and the first of 8 mornings without heat, electricity or hot water, in a Canadian autumn.

I wasn't scared, though, and I never thought of leaving town. But in New Orleans, with images of Katrina dancing in my head, I was suddenly anxious. I felt sick, and antsy. I needed to leave, now.

Like a good diplomat's daughter, I called the nearest Canadian consulate, and asked what sort of services were being offered to Canadians stranded in NOLA. "Oh, I'm sorry, we don't offer support for Canadians in the United States because, you know, the American services are good enough." Good enough? Good enough!? (I wanted to say, but didn't.) Is that what you told people when Katrina was on her way, too? Do 1500 victims agree that it was "good enough"?

*

Do you ever day dream about worst-case scenarios?

Blame it on an over-active imagination, or too many late night CSI re-runs, but I usually have a disaster day dream or two on the go. In some I'm the hero; in others, things end badly for me; in a few, the scene just fizzles out innocuously. I try the scenarios on for size, in the same way I'd heard people in New Orleans talking about staying or going: How does it fit? How do I react? What scares me the most? What makes sense, and what doesn't?

As it happens, when I'd arrived in New Orleans earlier in the summer, I had tried plenty of hurricane scenarios on for size. And my worst-case scenario? Always, always, the images I'd absorbed from Katrina of the mass evacuations, the lines of helpless people waiting in the heat for buses that never materialized, the elderly and disabled wilting in their chairs, the families separated and bused to makeshift shelters in all corners of the country, the filth and despair of the Superdome. I knew, above all else, that I did not want to be sent to a shelter, alone, knowing no one.

On Friday night, the hostel threw a "Katrinaversary" party. We ate spicy crawfish curry, did jello shooters (toasting to Katrina, and to Gustav), and floated in the pool talking about our escape plans. Mellow again following my afternoon panic, I turned to one of the staff and said: "You know, I love this town. But you guys should really work on this whole weather thing. It's a downer." "I know, man," he said. "This'll be my fourth evacuation. Why do you think we live the way we do? We all know we could lose everything, any day."

Saturday

After a week of build-up, of tension and anticipation almost like the lead-up to a dramatic romantic encounter, my exit was so rapid it was almost a let-down.

I dragged myself out of bed and downstairs at 9. A press conference had just wrapped: Gustav was getting bigger and moving faster than expected, a Category 3 already and he hadn't hit the Gulf yet. Tourists had been informed that they should all get out by noon. Voluntary evacuations of 30,000 citizens requiring assistance were underway; prisoners and hospital patients were already on their way out, and the Mayor was making no bones about a mandatory order coming by Sunday morning.

At 9:30, I was slamming down the phone again, after another fruitless call with Air Canada. "We don't have a policy in place yet," I was told. And then, after some more arguing, "The earliest I can get you out is Tuesday evening." "By Tuesday evening," I told the man with more contempt that I normally allow myself to use on hapless phone center employees, "I can guarantee you that no planes will be taking off. You don't have a policy yet? Get one!"

At 10, the hostel owner suggested that my existing itinerary, though it had me flying out a week later, would be enough to get me through the doors of the airport - only people with tickets booked were being allowed in. Once there, maybe I could bully or plead my way out? At 10:30, I jumped in his car and was dropped off at Harrah's; by 11, I was in a shuttle to the airport.

And by 3:30, I was on a plane home.

(At 11:45, a United employee said, "Air Canada told you what?! Of course I can get you out." And I started writing a very angry letter in my head. "Dear Air Canada...")

Reflections, Sunday and After

In the early stages at least, the parts I witnessed, the evacuation of New Orleans this time around couldn't have been more different from the last. Departures were systematic and organized; shuttles appeared where they had been promised; National Guardsmen patrolled the streets. On the ride to the airport, we drove past the Amtrak and Greyhound stations, with the Superdome looming above them. The parking lots for both were jammed, the sidewalks overflowing with citizens waiting for a way out - but behind the buildings, buses and train cars of every stripe were jammed in, too, waiting to be filled. "See that," said the shuttle driver. "That's just what Katrina looked like, all those people - only there were no buses, and no trains."

"I guess," I heard someone say at the airport, "that there's no better tribute to the victims of Katrina than to do it right this time." I nodded in agreement, but then I wondered: Wasn't this also the final insult? Didn't the efficiency show that an orderly evacuation of an entire city was, in fact, possible? That what happened in 2005 was pure neglect, avoidable and unnecessary?

I thought about that as my plane landed for a transifer in Chicago, and as I stared out at the city lights, for the first time my emotions - and my most vivid memories of the Katrina coverage I'd seen - caught up with me. I remembered the video of bloated bodies floating in the flood waters, the nauseating stories of residents trapped in their attics, scrabblingly hopelessly at their ceilings as the water rose. The heartbreaking interview, in Spike Lee's Katrina documentary, with the man who watched his mother die in the sun outside the Superdome.

The tension of my final two days in New Orleans didn't hit me until I was home, at my mom's house, drinking OJ and recounting recent events. I've never been one for reverse culture shock - I've always been ready to come home at the end of a trip - but this time, with an early arrival, I felt strange, detached and moody. Indifferent to my surroundings, tense, and preoccupied with the latest news from NOLA.

Maybe I hadn't let myself fully realize the potential seriousness of the situation while I was still in it, or maybe it was because the news had gotten steadily worse since I left, and by Sunday morning Gustav was looking like a very, very dangerous storm indeed.

Any doubts I'd had about the necessity of leaving were gone - but still, after nearly a week of waiting for Gustav, I still had that sick feeling of dread and anticipation. Sure, this time it looked as though the residents would be removed safely - but as Gustav strengthened over the warm waters of the Gulf, the question was, increasingly, whether they might once again have nothing to come back to.

I know I did the right thing by leaving - and besides, with the hostel closing, I had nowhere in the city to stay. But if by some horrible chance I have to watch New Orleans dying on CNN this week, it will be like watching a loved one die.

If that happens, I think there will always be a part of me that regrets not staying at the proverbial bedside for the final hours.