Well, the way you present the story, it seems like the event would have been a legally justifiable shooting. That isn't likely to make you feel better, but in those conditions, after multiple verbal warnings and a shot fired, when they kept coming you had to assume they weren't just looking for shelter. Whatever their intent was, you had no way to know beyond what you could see, and that was an intruder being persistent. If it hadn't been for the hurricane, you might have had to deal with a trial just because it wasn't a residence, but if it hadn't been after a hurricane, you wouldn't have been there anyway.

So, yeah, you'll have to live with it. Nobody can change that. But I strongly suspect that if anyone had tried to prosecute you, a claim of self defense would have been successful. So maybe don't beat yourself up over it.

As a side note, it would be a 30 06 rifle, which is usually pronounced thirty aught six. Aught is a slightly out of date word that means zero in that context. It is a 30 caliber round that was brought into usage in 1906. That's where the 06 comes from, unlike some rounds where a second number might refer to the length of the bullet. That's less for OP, who probably just ran into autocorrect because it's an archaic word now, and more for anyone scrolling through that was confused

I'm sorry. I won't try to justify or condemn you, as I'm sure you've done that plenty yourself. What an awful world we live in.

Have you managed to deal with this? Do you have someone to talk to?

I'm really sorry that you've had to carry this for so long. You have to remember that you were in an absolutely terrifying, unprecedented situation. I had my first experience with a relatively "minor" natural disaster last year and I was awed at how quickly things broke down into feeling mildly apocalyptic. I was one of the lucky ones and even then I was stressed the fuck out. I cannot imagine the sort of extreme levels of chaos and stress that you were going through...day by day not knowing what the next will bring.

You were young, practically still a child, and probably scared even if you don't remember being scared. Things went sideways and someone died. The very fact that you feel such remorse for someone you didn't know is a huge thing. If you didn't care about this man, I would say there might be something wrong with you. But you care and you know that it was a big deal. This event didn't happen because you are some bloodthirsty maniac, but rather because you were in a desperate situation. Should or could things have been done differently? I mean maybe. But no one can be certain and at this point it doesn't matter if things should have been done differently. Because they occurred and that was that. Time has progressed forward.

I hope that if you haven't already, that you find someone to talk to very deeply about this. Whether it's a therapist or a close friend or someone. In doing so, there might be a way for you to eventually find peace.

Best of luck, friend.