8:41 p.m. September 10, 2005. I stood in the street with my neighbors as out-of-state electricians repaired the transformer. We had been without power since 5:13 a.m., August 29, 2005, the morning Hurricane Katrina devastated the Mississippi Gulf Coast with its direct hit. Eight miles inland and buffered by Interstate-10, our homes in the Orange Grove neighborhood of Gulfport experienced damage but not to the extent of those south of I-10. The residents south of the railroad that runs parallel to the beach had their homes and businesses obliterated by the ferocity of the storm America still does not know hit Mississippi.
Not that it matters. As a lifelong Mississippian, I am well aware that the rest of the United States hates Mississippi. The media never reports the good things about Mississippi. With America’s distaste for the “Magnolia State”, it is no surprise that the country does not want to render sympathy toward Mississippi for anything.
Mississippi is the birthplace of numerous Pulitzer Prize winners, Academy Award winners, world-renown scientists, the #1 state firefighter training academy in the U.S., the largest ballet competition in the world, and is the home of rock-n-roll, blues, and country music. My home area, the Mississippi Gulf Coast is home to 150,000 people, a Navy Seabee base, Keesler Air Force Base, the nearby training base Camp Shelby, Ingalls Shipbuilding that builds ships for the U.S. Navy, and the NASA and NOAA installations at Stennis Space Center. (Bet you didn’t know that.)
In the days after our power came back on, internet connection was spotty, but phone lines worked intermittently. I called friends to let them know we had survived, since Katrina had claimed Mississippi lives. I was told I was on the Red Cross’ “Missing or Dead” list because no one had heard from me. What an odd feeling it was to email the Red Cross so they would mark me as “alive”. One person I called was my theatre mentor in New York, a drama teacher at LaGuardia High School. I said, “I just wanted to let you know I’m okay.” He sounded confused, “Okay from what?” I said, “The storm, Katrina. We’re okay.” He replied, “Of course, you are. The storm hit New Orleans, not you.” I gasped, “What?! What do you mean? Katrina hit Mississippi.” He said again, “No, the storm hit New Orleans. It’s been all over the news for a couple of weeks now. Mississippi didn’t get hit by Katrina.”
That was the moment I realized that New Orleans had the world’s attention in regard to Katrina. Katrina was predicted to hit NOLA, so the media understandably went to the more famous – and more loved – area of New Orleans. The storm did minor damage, but the city was intact. It was the next day, Tuesday, when NOLA residents were coming back to New Orleans or about to leave the Superdome or other shelters that the levees broke. The Army Corps of Engineers had advised the Louisiana state legislature for over 10 years to repair the levees, but the ineffective Louisiana politicians always said it was not in the budget. Then in 2005, Hurricane Katrina hit Mississippi with storm surge as high as 48-feet, bringing the ocean onto the land and up into the rivers and waterways along the Gulf Coast.
What happened to New Orleans was horrible, made worse by the fact that it was a largely preventable, man-made disaster. Every one of the Louisiana state legislators who voted against fortifying the levees should be charged with a thousand counts of murder.
On August 29, 2005, Mississippi took the full-brunt of Hurricane Katrina’s devastation. The rest is (an unreported) history.
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