NhuNgoc Pham was a high school student living in the New Orleans metro area when Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast on August 29, 2005. Her parents, immigrants from Vietnam, had recently purchased and been living in their new home for about a month when the huge storm made landfall.

Her family evacuated to Houston, Texas, expecting to stay there a couple of days. "Very stereotypical of someone who's lived in New Orleans for a long time, we just thought of it as another storm," recalls Pham. "It's going to come; it's going to pass."

But they ended up being in Houston for a couple of months. When they finally returned to their house in Jefferson Parish, La., they saw that the storm winds had caused significant damage to their new house. The roof and windows had to be replaced, Pham says.

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