When Hurricane Ike hit Houston in Sept. 2008, I was a 13-year-old with a mother undergoing cancer treatment. She was dependent on oxygen, which meant the eventual loss of power could have been deadly. Unlike past hurricanes, when the danger was somewhat exciting, this time felt anything but.

I was scared, and I remember vividly waiting for the storm to hit, waiting for the electricity to cut out, and praying that my mom would be OK. Luckily, she was. But in the days following Ike’s landfall, we learned of countless families in Houston and surrounding areas that weren’t OK. Lives were lost, homes were destroyed, and local communities were devastated. From that day forward, natural disasters became personal.