BEULAH - Jim and Michelle Schmit of Beulah will long remember the food.

Instead of the city's famous baguettes, they ate a single mini-muffin. Instead of thick, syrupy coffee, they drank a bottle of water and made it last the entire day.

The only other meal was a scanty portion, served on a small cake plate.

In a city famous for Creole cooking, they ate hurricane rations. And they were mighty thankful for them.

The Schmits and two of their children, Michael, 18, and Jessica, 15, were guests of the Hyatt in New Orleans when the great luxury hotel was dark, without running water and home to 4,000 souls stranded together in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

They were in the city because Jim Schmit, a Coteau Properties employee and emergency medical technician, was attending a national EMT conference.

It seemed - a long time ago when they were planning the trip - like a good idea to take their two youngest kids for a vacation, too.

Who would have guessed it would turn into the vacation from hell, and that even the hell they were in was better than that of countless thousands all around them.

The Schmits arrived home early Sunday morning, exhausted and running on adrenaline.

Michelle Schmit said she'd planned to kiss the ground of home when she got there and couldn't believe she forgot to bend and do it when she finally arrived.

They tried to leave New Orleans on Aug. 28 on their scheduled departure, but heavy traffic caused them to miss their flight out. That flight was the last to leave the airport and they were lucky enough, at the suggestion of a fellow traveler, to call back and secure a room at the Hyatt.

That sixth floor room and that hotel became their home, though it felt like a prison for the next six interminably long days.

The family spent the night the hurricane hit laying on the hotel's ballroom floor, listening and cringing when the building trembled and when the roar of wind and water outside reached ever greater levels.

Michelle Schmit said it was the only time during their ordeal that she thought they could die.

Jim Schmit gave his family an action plan if the structure started to give way. He told them to get to a pillar and stay put. To surge with 4,000 people would risk being stampeded to death.

It didn't come to that, though the hotel lost a lot of windows, many from debris flying off the dome just across the way.

They lay body to body with strangers and eventually a few of those strangers became a close-knit group of 12 people from all across the country.

They remained together, talked and sang, and Michelle Schmit said those friendships were the good that came from it all.

They got through it together and by helping an elderly couple next door, one of them in a wheelchair.

Jim Schmit said they carried up buckets of water from the swimming pool and filled the bathtub so they had had water for the toilet.

They didn't bathe for days. They didn't sleep in the room they shared with two other people, partly because they knew people were trying to get into the hotel from a nearby roof.

"We already knew we were better off than a lot of people," Michelle Schmit. They could hear screaming from the dome, but no gunshots. The kids were getting stressed.

Jim Schmit said the hardest part for him was feeling like a prisoner, trapped and unable to take action.

"I had no control over nothing," he said.

They had some cell phone service and through their son in North Dakota were able to contact a friend from Texas, who made the long drive to New Orleans to get them, only to be turned back by authorities 30 miles away.

Their son also called their Beulah minister, who started a prayer chain among the Prince of Peace Congregation in Beulah.

The prayer was a comfort.

Finally, Saturday, they were told to pack to leave. The airport out was another horror reel, with people passing out from heat and exhaustion.

"It was nasty," Jim Schmit said.

After some finagling, they got on airplane, though home was still four airports and one, forever-seeming day away.

Besides the hurricane rations, Jim Schmit said his other lasting impression was, "Our government was too slow. When it happens somewhere else in the world, they're there in a snap. In our country, they just didn't care."