Approximately 18,000 Hurricane Katrina evacuees packed into the Reliant Astrodome for their third day in the stadium on September 3, 2005 in Houston.. Hurricane Katrina victims arrived early Thursday morning where thousands of people slept on the field in cots inside the Astrodome Stadium in Houston.

The three-year-old boy who wandered around the Reliant Astrodome parking lot alone didn't appear to be scared or even bothered as busloads of Hurricane Katrina evacuees arrived from New Orleans.

His name was Tory, and he held tightly to a bag of chips.

Cheetos, I think, because his tiny fingers were covered in the chips' orange dust.

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It's been 20 years, and time has blurred his face from my memory.

"Where's your mama?" I asked. He shrugged his shoulders and shoved a chip into his mouth.

I was struck by how composed he was in the aftermath of one of the worst natural disasters in U.S. history. Hurricane Katrina displaced more than 1 million people and triggered a mass migration comparable to the Dust Bowl in the 1930s. Nearly 1,400 people were killed.

TELL US: Did you resettle in Houston after Hurricane Katrina? We want to hear from........

© Houston Chronicle