\n<\/p>\n
\n\tWhen Tarriona \u201cTank\u201d Ball and her family evacuated New Orleans in the days leading up to Hurricane Katrina<\/a>\u2019s landfall, she had no idea just how much her life was about to change.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tThe lead vocalist and frontperson of the Grammy-winning band Tank and the Bangas<\/a>, Ball was only a senior in high school when Katrina ravaged New Orleans and surrounding areas in late August of 2005, killing at least 1,392 people (accounts vary), displacing<\/a> roughly 1.5 million, and submerging 80 percent of the city in dangerous, debris-filled water.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tAt the urging of then-New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin, Ball\u2019s family packed up their car and headed to Hattiesburg, Mississippi, where they joined other family members who also chose to evacuate. They convinced her grandparents, who did not want to leave, to please reconsider, a decision that she says undoubtedly saved their lives. The drive, which would normally take just under two hours, took all day, as evacuees navigated bumper-to-bumper traffic trying to make their way to safety.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cWe thought we were only going to be gone for a day or two,\u201d Ball tells Rolling Stone<\/em>. \u201cYou know, no big deal. Never thought that we would never return \u2014\u00a0because even though you return months later, you still never return to the thing which you left. Everything is different.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tBall and her family wound up relocating to Indianapolis, where she finished high school away from the friendships and community she\u2019d spent her life building. Senior year is a tender, meaningful time for many teenagers, and Ball says missing out on that period of celebration with her classmates was \u201cabsolutely devastating.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tAt the time, social media was in its infancy, with MySpace just two years old and Facebook not yet widely adopted. Ball says that MySpace became a way to keep in touch with her former classmates, most of whom were also displaced and spread out across the region.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cWe were the type of community where people\u2019s families literally lived right around the corner from them, or in the same apartment complex or the same projects,\u201d she says. \u201cEverybody was very close. So, the internet, MySpace, that was our way of connecting and finding our classmates that we lost, our friends.\u201d<\/p>\n