Katrina Gallery

Nothing prepared me for the devastation that Jane and I witnessed on the Mississippi Coast. Traveling through mile after mile of rubble brought home the scale of this tragedy in a way that single images cannot. One of our interview subjects had served in Bosnia and Iraq; he told us that the destruction in his hometown was worse than anything he’d seen in either war zone. Conflicts, he observed, have targets, however irrational they may be. Katrina did not discriminate – the storm swept away everything in its path. The storm surge rose about thirty feet in Bay St. Louis, Port Townsend’s sister city, and highest point in the county is just 26 feet above sea level.

I am haunted by the wreckage we saw, scraps of people’s lives trapped in trees two stories up, fluttering like ghosts over leveled homes. However the most enduring image from this journey is the resilience of the human spirit. While the infrastructure of Hancock County has been reduced to rubble, many of the people remain in place, camping on the ground where their homes or businesses once stood. Congregations meet on slabs of cement. CEOs and janitors share floor space. All are struggling to rebuild their fragile community.