What Happened?

On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina, a Category 5 storm with winds in excess of 150 miles per hour and a storm surge of above 30 feet, made landfall just East of Bay St. Louis, Mississippi.  The high winds, rising water, and tornadoes devastated the United States Gulf Coast Region including Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama.  The damage stretched for more than 150 miles along the coast and for more than 75 miles inland.  The storm lasted for only half a day but killed over 1600 people and destroyed over 20 communities, leaving over thousands of square miles in the disaster area.  The infrastructure including communication, roads, water, electricity all was gone.  The damage was weighed against Hurricane Camille which had hit the area in 1969.  Those who experienced both have declared Katrina was far worse than Camille.  Katrina is the worst natural disaster in the US in Modern history. 

In Bay St. Louis 80% of the homes are destroyed, every building has been flooded, the beachfront is washed away, and the communities of Bay St. Louis and Waveland are isolated with southeast Louisiana destroyed to the west and the entire Mississippi Gulf Coast including the Highway 90 Bridge destroyed to the East.  The people of the community have lost their families, their homes, their jobs.  They are often still paying a mortgage for a destroyed house that their insurance will not cover.  The recovery is moving very slowly.