Katrina 10 years later: Mississippi
Hurricane Katrina came roaring towards the Mississippi Gulf Coast on the morning of Aug. 29, 2005, bringing devastating 120 mph winds, a nearly 30-foot storm surge and 55-foot sea waves. The eye of the storm passed over the state's shoreline communities. While the devastation in New Orleans dominated media attention, these smaller communities faced near total destruction.
The beach towns of Waveland and Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, have had different recovery stories, one coming back stronger than the other.
Katrina washed away Waveland, a town of 8,000. Here, the remains of a pier destroyed 10 years ago are still visible off the Waveland shore on August 15, 2015. Many of the piers are privately owned and haven't been rebuilt because of the cost. Ten years later, the town still struggles.
Story: Voices of Katrina: 10 Years later
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Katrina - Waveland, Mississippi
Judee English took her mother and her dogs to a hotel in Waveland to ride out the storm. Immediately after Katrina passed over the area, English made her way down the beach road toward her home. She started crying, "cause I knew ... I just knew ... I said, 'I know my house is gone.' Katrina came and took that away from us ... I walked back here to see what was left. ... All that was left was the pilings."
English lives about a mile inland now. "I don't live on the beach yet. But I plan to rebuild. ... People are still dealing with Katrina. I don't know if it'll ever leave us. It's been a hard road. But -- a lot of us are survivors. We've all become closer. And we all help each other."
Katrina - Waveland, Mississippi
An old photo of English's home at 726 South Beach Boulevard in Waveland. She lived in the house she shared with her mother for nearly 25 years before it was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina.
A friend called English at 5 a.m. on August 29, 2005 to tell her, "The eye's coming right for y'all."
English said, "We stood on the balcony watching everything go under water." She and her mother lived at the hotel they rode out the storm in for three weeks.
Katrina - Waveland, Mississippi
"My neighbor next door, Mr. Henicken, had a round house. And that's the only way I found my property in Waveland. And I just sat there crushed," said English. She put a sign near her neighbor's house on South Beach Boulevard to let people know she was okay.
"I was sleeping on the beach in a tent and I decided to make a sign to say that I was still here. Wasn't leaving. Wasn't gonna go anywhere. And that's how the sign came about. I just took a piece of scrap wood, found some spray paint from one of the volunteers. And I just painted the sign, which meant a lot. "
Katrina - Waveland, Mississippi
After staying at a hotel for several weeks with her mother, and later in a tent on her property, English and her mother were given a FEMA trailer. Today, she lives a mile inland in a FEMA cottage, still hoping to rebuild on her beachfront property. All along the streets of Waveland, there are empty lots that dot the landscape, where homeowners are hoping to rebuild or get a good sale price.
"I loved Waveland. It was paradise before the storm and it's still paradise." said English, August 15, 2015.
Katrina - Waveland, Mississippi
Despair quickly gave way to anger, and morbid humor in some cases, after Katrina devastated Waveland. As people on the Gulf Coast struggled to cope with the tragedy, aid was slow to come from FEMA.
Katrina - Mississippi Gulf Coast
Residents of Waveland and Bay. St. Louis, along with other communities along the Gulf Coast, lost most of their possessions. Family photos were among the personal belongings strewn everywhere and destroyed by the storm.
Katrina - Waveland, Mississippi
A month after the storm, a spray-painted message let recovery and demolition workers know not to tear down a home at 228 Market Street in Waveland. With access to area limited for residents in the immediate aftermath of Katrina people along the coast spray-painted messages on their homes or whatever they could find to communicate to insurance companies, officials, friends and family.
Katrina - Waveland, Mississippi
While the grass and trees have grown back, a home photographed 10 years remains boarded up in Waveland with faint traces of the original "graffiti" still visible on August 15, 2015.
Katrina - Waveland, Mississippi
At the time this photo was taken, all that was known to passersby was that Todd and Chanel were looking for a mother's ashes, October 1, 2005 - a stark reminder of the kind of emotional losses suffered by residents.
Ten years later Chanel Alaniz explained, "It took us about three months to get back to Mississippi, me and my son and my husband at the time. But at about the two-month mark, we went back. And you know, we still hadn't talked to everybody that we knew. We still hadn't had time to communicate with everybody. So, the only thing that we knew to do was write on the home."
Before Katrina struck, there were five homes on the property at 104 North Central Avenue in Waveland, Mississippi. Todd Curtis White, Jr., and his wife Chanel Alaniz lived in the white house. Their son, Dutch, was born two weeks before the storm. Chanel's mother had died four months earlier. It was a tumultuous time. The ashes of Chanel's mother had to be left behind along with everything else when they evacuated to Philadelphia prior to the storm. They left their three dogs behind, and most of their personal possessions. The water reached the transformer sitting on a pole above their rental home, but the house remained intact.
Katrina - Waveland, Mississippi
None of the residents returned to live on the property at 104 North Central Avenue. Ten years later, the property remains empty.
After Katrina, FEMA offered Alaniz and White a trailer if they wanted to return to Mississippi, "but the devastation was so great that we decided to stay ... in Oklahoma," where Alaniz's father lived. Though people searched the property, Alaniz never recovered her mother's ashes, which she said was like losing her mother all over again.
Post-Katrina, Chanel suffered from homesickness and the strain on her marriage led to divorce. "I wanted to go back to a place that didn't exist. The community wasn't there, the people were -- were not there." She still lives in Oklahoma with her 10-year-old son.
Katrina - Waveland, Mississippi
Chanel's sister Tina Alaniz stands on a plot of land in Bay St. Louis where her home stood 10 years ago. "We planned on coming back shortly after the storm. We didn't pack much," she said.
"It was kinda surreal after the storm. ... There was nothing to come back to. ... The house was gone, totally trashed. Everything was gone -- our personal effects just strewn for miles." The family lived in a FEMA trailer for awhile, bulldozed the property where their home had been and rebuilt their lives in neighboring Pass Christian.
Katrina - Waveland, Mississippi
Train tracks lie twisted and destroyed by Hurricane Katrina in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, October 1, 2005.
Judee English: "I got to the railroad tracks and I saw, when I got on top of the railroad tracks, I saw the devastation."
Katrina - Waveland, Mississippi
A train rides along the rebuilt tracks near Chanel Alaniz's former home in Bay St. Louis, one of the positive signs of recovery, August 10, 2015.
Katrina - Waveland, Mississippi
In the weeks after Hurricane Katrina struck, new flood maps dictated base flood elevations much higher than before. In the "velocity zones," areas most likely to be impacted by a storm surge, the lowest floor was required to be 21 feet above ground. One side consequence of these extremely elevated homes is the impact on the social fabric of neighborhoods.
A resident described the new, higher homes -- referred to by locals as "pole houses" -- as part of building for the storm you had rather than the storm that will come.
Katrina - Bay St. Louis, Mississippi
The destroyed town center of Bay St. Louis, Mississippi soon after Katrina. Roger Caplinger, the owner of the new Bouys Bar in the town, described the devastation: "This area was the epicenter of Katrina. ... We looked like Hiroshima."
Katrina - Bay St. Louis, Mississippi
The frame of a bar is all that remains of beachside bar in Bay St. Louis on October 1, 2005, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
Katrina - Bay St. Louis, Mississippi
Caplinger, one of the owners of Buoys Bar, poses in front of the beach bar, which opened in October 2014 at the site of the previous photo in Bay St. Louis. Ten years later, Caplinger explained the bar that was there pre-Katrina was owned by Ernie Beckemeyer, a "great friend." The upstairs bar was called the Good Life and the downstairs bar was Daydreams. "We used to pull up in a boat and wade in."
In the weeks after Katrina, some continued to use the site as a happy hour location.
Caplinger said, "Everybody misses the Good Life. Everybody misses Ernie." The place was an icon. Beckemeyer passed away before he could rebuild on the site, after fighting to keep the land as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers rebuilt the shoreline and installed a seawall.
Katrina - Bay St. Louis, Mississippi
The shoreline has been completely rebuilt in Bay St. Louis, including a new marina and $19 million seawall finished in 2012 (steps at right) to help revitalize the area.
According to Caplinger, "The Corps of Engineers came in and they-- they opted to put in a new sea wall, which is protection for Bay St. Louis. But it was a big to-do ... because they had to have a certain amount of ground."
Katrina - Bay St. Louis, Mississippi
A woman walks her dog along the $19 million seawall, completed in 2012, in Bay St. Louis on August 14, 2015.
The new wall is a concrete stadium step design, which stands 12 feet tall from the base of the sand and 20 feet above sea level at the top of the wall. The wall wasn't started until 2010. Sand was trucked in to extend the beach.
Katrina - Bay St. Louis, Mississippi
A boy and his father enjoy the new pedestrian area along the top of the seawall as they pass Jimmy Rutherford Pier in Bay St. Louis, August 14, 2015.
One of the last of 70 post-Katrina projects for Bay St. Louis was the pier, completed in early 2014.
Katrina - Bay St. Louis, Mississippi
People walk along the beach road on August 14, 2015. Half the homes in Bay St. Louis were destroyed by Hurricane Katrina, but the town's recovery accelerated the past two years with a new marina and seawall as well as shops and restaurants sprouting up along the beach road.
Katrina - Bay St. Louis, Mississippi
A man drives his boat out of the 163 slip marina in the Bay St. Louis Municipal Harbor on August 14, 2015. The marina has been part of the revitalization efforts for the town.
A 350-foot-long fixed pier and St. Louis Bay Bridge connecting Bay St. Louis to Pass Christian, heavily damaged by Katrina, is visible in the distance. The new two-mile span bridge opened May 17, 2007, an important sign of recovery for the area.The storm surge wiped out the old concrete bridge, which rose 55 feet above the bay. The new $267 million bridge is higher at 85 feet above the water.
Katrina - Bay St. Louis, Mississippi
People enjoy happy hour at The Blind Tiger, the first beachfront bar built after Katrina. The Blind Tiger rests above the new 20-foot seawall.
Katrina - Bay St. Louis, Mississippi
People enjoy happy hour on a Friday at Bouys Bar in Bay St. Louis on August 14, 2015.
"It's becoming fun again. It's kinda becoming what it was before Katrina and-- and maybe in some ways even a little better," said Caplinger.
Story: Voices of Katrina: 10 Years later
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