Survivor of Katrina loses home to Hurricane Harvey: 'Most traumatic experience of my life'

A survivor of Hurricane Harvey described how he fled his home almost 12 years ago to the day after doing the same during Hurricane Katrina. The 22-year-old called Romeo left his flooded flat in Houston having been in a similar situation in New Orleans more than a decade ago. He told local TV station KENS5: "Most traumatic experience of my life, repeating itself. That’s the crazy part. Romeo was 10 and living in New Orleans when Katrina hit. Now he's in Houston enduring Harvey. https://t.co/xw8pBDR5N7— KENS 5 (@KENS5) August 29, 2017 "You see the cars under water. It’s the same thing, it’s the same thing again.” Romeo told KENS5 his grandmother drowned after Katrina hit. He was 10 at the time and spent a month displaced at the Astrodome in Houston. He said: "Love the people that are close to you as much as you can,” he said. “Don’t forget to tell people that you love them because you’ll lose people.” Residents of Houston evacuating on boats Credit: Reuters Harvey became the most extreme rain event ever recorded in the United States with 51.1 inches of rainfall measured just east of Houston Texas climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon, said it was the heaviest storm anywhere in the US ever, apart from isolated incidents in Hawaii. "And it’s still raining," he added. The rainfall over a 20,000-square-mile area amounted to nearly 20 times the daily discharge of the Mississippi River, he said.