In Mississippi, Hurricane Katrina altered landscape, lives

The desperate voices on the phone told emergency dispatchers Hurricane Katrina was much worse than anyone imagined — “We’re drowning!” — but until Desiree Hernandez stepped from the windowless bunker at a Biloxi, Miss., fire station into the air outside, she had no idea.

“I looked down to Highway 90 and there was nothing there,” she said. “And it was just so surreal. When you knew all the businesses — and you knew, ‘OK, that was Ruby Tuesday’s, that was the Shell station, that was that.’

“Where’s all the hotels? Where did all that stuff inside of all those buildings go? … Where are the signs? … Where did it go?”

Kelvin Schulz and three of his children were among the desperate that day. But he was in Bay St. Louis, not Biloxi. Katrina’s hurricane-force winds extended 115 miles from the center when it made landfall Aug. 29, 2005, on the Mississippi-Louisiana line.

The Schulzes were on the second floor of a two-story brick building that 36 years earlier had survived what everyone considered the worst hurricane imaginable, Camille.

Hurricane Katrina, they and thousands of others discovered, was even worse. The family swam out of the building as it fell apart, but Schulz’s mother-in-law, Jane Mollere, refused to budge. Water lapping at her calves, the 80-year-old looked at him and said, “Kelvin, I’m too old for this.”

A survivor of Camille, the frail woman knew what lay ahead. She was one of 167 South Mississippians who lost their lives to Katrina.

Ten years out, the empty lots stretching from Waveland to Pascagoula, including the one where Mollere perished, attest to Katrina’s strength. She was a hurricane like no other, but should not serve as a barometer of the next storm. And there always will be a next hurricane.

The Gulf Coast has prepared by building a stronger backbone: hardened harbors and public buildings, homes constructed or remodeled to stronger codes, and emergency response communications designed to work through disaster.

“We got flattened,” Haley Barbour, the governor who presided over Katrina recovery, told the Sun Herald. “We actually bore the brunt of the worst natural disaster in American history and after awhile, the American people realized that. And they watched Mississippians, the courage and character of these strong, resilient, self-reliant people. And there’s no doubt in my mind that, when all was said and done in the wake of Katrina, the way our Mississippians responded did more to improve the image of our state than anything that’s happened in my lifetime.”

The night before Katrina hit, Harrison County Coroner Gary Hargrove and emergency responders were on Henderson Point, monitoring the water level, which was already rising.

“When I got out of the truck,” Hargrove said, “I took a flashlight and shined it on the ground. And I knew we were going to be in trouble at that point because there were insects moving to the north, towards high ground. And I’ve always been taught by my parents and my grandparents — old folklore — that if the animals and birds and insects start moving and flying away, something bad’s fixing to happen, because they have a second sense about them.

“ … That just reinforced the information we were getting about how bad this was going to be.”

In Bay St. Louis, Charles Harry Gray returned after evacuating to find Katrina had leveled the new home he had fashioned from a 1911 Ford assembly plant. The silk brocade walls and marble floors were demolished, as were his fine antiques.

The Greek Revival home where he previously lived on the beach was gone, too. The donated building downtown, where he had nurtured the Hancock County Historical Society, also was heavily damaged.

“I was standing out front just about to have a stroke,” the 81-year-old Gray said in his patrician Southern accent. He didn’t, of course.

He and his friends combed his scoured lot as if on an archaeological dig, uncovering sterling silver miniatures, china from the 1800s and other treasures. Similar scenes played out across the Coast, with residents combing through the rubble for lost possessions.

In those early days after Katrina, more than one person noted, residents had shell-shocked looks on their faces, as if they had been to war.

“It’s certainly the most devastating thing that had ever happened,” Gray said. “When something like that happens — I have seen it many times — you rise to the occasion and worry about it later.

“World War II, women who had never done a thing in their life went to work in the factories. Here, people went out and pulled debris out of the street and hauled it to trash cans and did things they never thought they would do.”

Or, as Haley Barbour put it, “We hitched up our britches and went to work.”

In the weeks after the storm, sunflowers bloomed in the ruins as if to demonstrate rebirth had begun. Volunteers from all parts of the country arrived in waves, returning again and again to help rebuild.

Katrina altered the landscape and lives. Families that lost homes near the waterfront had to decide, would they rebuild there, or move north? Couples were sometimes torn, with one wanting to leave the waterfront and the other longing to stay.

Residents whose homes were lost or damaged are finally feeling like they have resettled to a new normal.

Michael Kovacevich, who lives on East Biloxi’s peninsula, rebuilt his mother’s house next door and his own home.

When the storm started, he had nine people in his house. By the time it ended, there were closer to 30.

“People say, ‘You’re a hero,’” he said. “No. You’re sitting on a porch and you’re looking at little kids across the street going underwater, you go get them, you know? That’s the thing to do. The water’s not over your head yet, you can go get them early.

“It’s when we got to the point where everybody was here, we were in uncharted waters. We had no clue what to do next. We were as high as we could go. There’s no more higher.”

Kovacevich’s neighborhood is mostly vacant lots, but he’s happy to be there nonetheless. The storm has changed his outlook.

“It was rough and it changed a lot of lives,” he said. “A lot of difference in the way you live, too. Before the storm, I had a lot of antiques and I would go to auctions.

“That don’t mean nothing anymore, all that. You can forget all those antiques and all the fancy stuff and just live comfortable. Enjoy life.”

This story was originally published August 28, 2015 at 7:43 PM with the headline "In Mississippi, Hurricane Katrina altered landscape, lives."