When Hurricane Katrina arrived on our shores a decade ago, it was clear that parts of our state would never be the same. The storm was the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history, slamming into the Gulf Coast with a 30-foot surge and 100-plus mile per hour winds. Its massive impact touched all 82 of our counties and took the lives of 238 Mississippians.
At the time, I was serving in the U.S. House of Representatives for Mississippi’s First District, which includes the state’s northernmost counties. My wife, Gayle, and I traveled down to Pascagoula as part of a relief effort in the days that followed. We witnessed the overwhelming generosity of Mississippians across the state, from the donations that filled an eighteen-wheeler truck in Tupelo to the compassionate outreach at Agricola Baptist Church in George County, which became a vital hub for delivering supplies.
Katrina will always be remembered as a storm of profound loss, but it also revealed our state’s incredible strength. Despite almost total devastation, Mississippians refused to be defeated by the extraordinary challenges that Katrina had put before us.
In Washington, the entire congressional delegation worked tirelessly on a bipartisan basis with our outstanding state and local leaders to send critical assistance. These efforts were used to rebuild homes, construct new roads and bridges, reopen police stations and schools, and bring back jobs. Other measures were put in place to protect taxpayer dollars from wasteful spending and see that important reforms were made regarding the way Washington responds to emergencies.
Our state has been successful in seeing that resources go to where they are most needed. Mississippi kept the confirmed fraud rate to less than one percent and has earned recognition from the Government Accountability Office for transparency and accountability. Reports show that more than 99 percent of federal block grants have been obligated to projects and more than 90 percent of those funds have been distributed.
We learned many lessons from Katrina, including that disputes and delays can arise during the insurance process. I authored the COASTAL Act, which became law in 2012, to begin reforming the wind-versus-water claims for total-loss properties. The law uses scientific data and observations collected during a hurricane or severe storm to determine with greater accuracy what caused a home to be completely destroyed. This determination can then help homeowners to be made whole.
This 10th anniversary is major benchmark for our progress, but the challenge now is to keep moving forward. The Coast’s full recovery has never been limited only to rebuilding the infrastructure that was lost. Instead, our mission is to bring back our coastal communities in a way that both honors the past and makes our state even stronger. A great deal of the success we have had so far is owed to the dedicated Mississippians who chose to stay and rebuild after losing everything.
There are still visible reminders of Katrina’s wrath, like concrete slabs where homes used to be and wall markers in popular restaurants displaying how high the flood waters rose. There have been setbacks, too, including the BP oil spill in 2010, hurting an already fragile local economy.
Places like the state-of-the-art Biloxi Visitors Center – which preserves the stained-glass windows from the Dantzler House that once occupied the site – show how the Coast has become a home for both the old and the new. Bay St. Louis, for example, still has the charm and energy of its historic Old Town, along with a new bridge, harbor, and protective seawall to help foster residential and commercial development. In Pascagoula, Anchor Square offers a place to work and shop in converted Mississippi Emergency Management Agency cottages once used as temporary housing by Katrina victims. Then there is Keesler Air Force Base, which was named the nation’s top Air Force installation less than a decade after sustaining nearly $1 billion in hurricane damage.
Like Camille before her, Katrina tested the Gulf Coast in unprecedented ways. Ten years later, there is still plenty of work to do. As neighbors, families, and friends, we all have a stake in seeing the Gulf Coast succeed. The past decade has taught us that we are much better when we work together.
This op-ed was published in the Clarion-Ledger on August 23, 2015.
