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Twenty years ago, Hurricane Katrina devastated the northern Gulf Coast, killing nearly 1,400 people and destroying communities from Louisiana to Alabama. Much of the focus in marking the Katrina anniversary is on New Orleans, where federal levees failed and flooded the city. But the hurricane also decimated the Mississippi Gulf Coast, where it made landfall. NPR's Debbie Elliott revisits the daunting aftermath of the disaster with the state's governor at the time, Haley Barbour.
DEBBIE ELLIOTT, BYLINE: Former Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour stands before a wall-sized satellite image of Hurricane Katrina as it headed for landfall on August 29, 2005.
HALEY BARBOUR: It came in - the eye came in right there on the Pearl River, which is the boundary between Louisiana and Mississippi.
ELLIOTT: It was packing winds of 120 miles an hour and a storm surge nearing 30 feet.
BARBOUR: The most powerful winds, storm surge, are in the upper-right-hand corner. And that hit us.
ELLIOTT: Barbour is walking through a new exhibit in Jackson, at the state-funded Two Mississippi Museums. It's called Hurricane Katrina: Mississippi Remembers. The entire 70-mile Mississippi coast was inundated with Katrina's three-story-high storm surge, knocking out bridges, buckling roads and washing away homes and businesses.
BARBOUR: We had about 60,000 structures that were uninhabitable. More than 25,000 that were gone. We created a new verb. The verb was slabbed (ph). I've been slabbed.
ELLIOTT: As in, there's nothing left of my house but the concrete slab it was built on. Coastal flooding reached 10 miles inland, and hurricane-force winds stretched into north Mississippi. Two hundred and thirty-eight people were killed in the state. Barbour says it was like nothing he'd seen before.
BARBOUR: When I flew over the coast in a helicopter after the hurricane, it looked like the hand of God had wiped away the coast. Utter obliteration.
ELLIOTT: Barbour was in his first term as governor of Mississippi, returning home after years as a Republican power broker in Washington, D.C., including serving in the Reagan White House. The first crisis after Katrina hit came immediately, Barbour says, when he realized that federal aid was not on the way. FEMA was overwhelmed, and couldn't rush food and water to the Gulf Coast.
BARBOUR: From almost the beginning, the logistical plan collapsed, and we weren't getting what we were supposed to be getting.
ELLIOTT: After the initial bumps, though, he says the federal response improved and the state got what it needed, including reimbursement for getting power and water systems back up and clearing debris - an endeavor that took a year and a half. The state got more than $5 billion in federal grants to help rebuild, and 48 other states offered resources.
Barbour's focus was on bringing back jobs, schools and - most importantly - housing to get people to return to the coast. The rebuilding effort got a huge boost from the more than 900,000 volunteers who worked in Mississippi in the five years after Katrina.
DERRICK CHRISTOPHER EVANS: Really, the most incredible saving grace.
ELLIOTT: That's Derrick Christopher Evans of Gulfport. He says volunteers helped to rebuild the historic Turkey Creek community where he's from.
EVANS: The one thing that's just given people hope, as well as material recovery.
ELLIOTT: Evans was critical of the state's early emphasis on getting casinos and the port quickly back in business. He would have liked to have seen more investment in struggling neighborhoods. Turkey Creek was founded just after the Civil War by former slaves and freedmen. It's now surrounded by heavy industry. Because it's about seven miles inland, residents mostly did not have flood insurance, so navigating the aftermath of Katrina was daunting.
EVANS: It's not just getting back in your house, man. When you get hit by Katrina, the entire book of the federal apparatus of the state - its like you got to learn the phone book. So it was mayhem, man. I wouldn't wish it on anybody.
ELLIOTT: Even though it's been 20 years, the scars are fresh, deep in the swamp where the Pearl River empties into the Gulf of Mexico.
JANYNE CRAPEAU: Pedro. Come here, Pedro. There he comes.
(SOUNDBITE OF TAPPING)
CRAPEAU: I see you.
ELLIOTT: Janyne Crapeau walks along the boardwalk behind her restaurant, Turtle Landing Bar & Grill. The resident one-eyed alligator, Pedro, pokes his snout above the glass-smooth bayou to greet her. She's had this bar for 23 years here in Pearlington - the last stop in Mississippi before the Louisiana state line.
CRAPEAU: It's a beautiful little town. A lot of good people. They'll help you in any kind of way they can. But if you step on one of us, God bless you (laughter), you know?
ELLIOTT: It's where Katrina made landfall.
CRAPEAU: This little town's gone through hell.
ELLIOTT: Crapeau and her husband rode out Katrina on the second floor of the building, where the water got chest-high and didn't start receding until the next day. It was harrowing.
CRAPEAU: Scared as hell, upstairs. We lost all communication.
ELLIOTT: People in Pearlington were on their own for four days, she says, before helicopters started dropping food and water. Crapeau says they set up in the parking lot, handing out warm beer and serving what canned goods she could salvage from the flooded kitchen. Once help arrived, they set up a tent to feed people using generator power. It was 2 1/2 months before Pearlington got electricity back, and it was six years before Crapeau repaired the bar - new roof, new electrical, new plumbing and a new kitchen put upstairs.
(SOUNDBITE OF FOOTSTEPS STOMPING)
ELLIOTT: At 69 and now fighting cancer, she still works in the kitchen, dishing up her signature cheeseburger.
CRAPEAU: Half-pound of ground chuck.
(SOUNDBITE OF SLAPPING)
CRAPEAU: It was a struggle, but we did it.
ELLIOTT: Pearlington has lost about a third of its population since Katrina. Crapeau says you can still see the hurricane's footprint - empty slabs and crumbling structures. But she's not giving up.
CRAPEAU: I'm trying to pull Pearlington back, but you have to have people to help you. I don't know. I just hope to hell we never see another one.
BARBOUR: Katrina revealed character.
ELLIOTT: Haley Barbour, now 77, reflects on what he sees as the takeaway from the Katrina experience in Mississippi.
BARBOUR: Our people got knocked down flat, but they got right back up, hitched up their britches and went to work.
ELLIOTT: Barbour says his mother always taught him that crisis and catastrophe do not create character, but instead reveal it. He sees that now in the perseverance of Mississippi's Katrina survivors.
Debbie Elliott, NPR News, Pearlington, Mississippi.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUDDY WATERS SONG, "THE SAME THING") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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