NEWS

After Katrina, officials better prepared for storms

Tim Doherty
American Staff Writer
While in a conference in the Governor’s Conference Room at Mississippi Emergency Management Agency in Pearl, Gov. Phil Bryant, left of center, listens to MEMA Director Robert Latham, second from right, as they go over the disaster declaration process during a statewide hurricane response exercise. The process simulated a category 3, 120 MPH storm which followed the same path Hurricane Katrina took in 2005.

When it comes to Mother Nature versus human nature, the former usually prevails, and it only makes matters worse when what should have been a hard lesson learned has to be taught yet again.

"I know for two or three years afterwards, after (Hurricane) Katrina, when we'd just have thunderstorms, people were calling our office and they're worried," said Terry Steed, recently-retired director of the Forrest County Emergency Management Agency. "Now, you don't see that anymore, and that's a concern that maybe they have forgotten.

"People kind of have short memories when it comes to bad things. But it's just strictly a timing thing with these storms. People need to remember."

For anyone who went through it, Hurricane Katrina is hard to forget.

The massive storm retained hurricane-force winds all the way to Meridian. It scoured and scraped apart the Gulf Coast before screaming through south Mississippi like an unleashed banshee.

More than 1,800 people died across the Gulf South. More than $108 billion in damage lay in its wake. The sheer misery it caused over the last weeks of summer in 2005 is incalculable.

"It pretty much destroyed the Gulf Coast," said Robert Latham Jr., executive director of the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency. "For several blocks inland, and basically, all the way back to the railroad tracks, there wasn't anything left but slabs.

"You had tens of thousands of homes further inland that lost roofs, shingles on roofs. More than 830,000 people without power. On the Coast alone, you had 46 million cubic yards of debris, and it was like 11 months just to get that out of there."

Issues after the storm only made matters worse. Communications compromised, crimping coordination.

"We were able to talk short range, and the amateur radio guys, we put a station in the office, and they came in and were basically doing all the communication for us back to Jackson and the National Weather Service," said James Smith, Lamar County EMA director. "It was three weeks before I talked to anyone from the state (Emergency Operations Center on the phone."

The relief response from federal agencies came under withering criticism for delays in supplying critical commodities — water, food, ice, gas, shelter — into ravaged areas, and then when help began to appear it fell far short of the need.

"A lot of the solutions that we had to come up with for the problems that we had, we had come up with on the fly because there wasn't a plan that was working," Latham said. "There's a lot of lessons that we learned, and a lot of them were interconnected."

And a lot of them have been incorporated into the plans and contingencies of the emergency response at the state and local levels.

"I think we're definitely better prepared," Rep. Steven Palazzo said. "Whether it was tornadoes, whether it was hurricanes, whether it was flooding, we've got our act together.

"I think Mississippi is good at preparing for natural disasters, surviving and recovering from natural disasters and it's all because of what we've gone through with Hurricane Katrina. I think we've done a fantastic job, not just building back, but building forward, mitigating against future storms, preparing for future storms, being a little smarter where we develop."

In Forrest and Lamar counties, millions of dollars in mitigation grants paid for portable generators, sirens, storm-proofing public buildings and smaller storm shelters scattered across the county to temporarily shield first responders.

Community Block Development Grants paid for $2 million-plus community shelters in both counties. A CBDG grant helped Lamar County build 13 new fire stations. A mix of FEMA dollars rebuilt Hattiesburg's downtown fire station.

Communication systems, including the $350 million MSWIN system, should bolster the ability of different jurisdictions to remain in contact.

"All of those gaps that we had during Katrina, we've addressed most of them," Latham said. "I think when you look at the state level, we stock some of our commodities and we have contracts in place for MREs water, ice, trucks to transport stuff. We have contracts in place for fuel. We have contracts in place for staff augmentation.

"So, you look at all these things that were weaknesses after Katrina, and we now have mechanisms in place to fill those gaps."

Col. Jeffrey P. Van, commander 155th Armored Brigade Combat Team, Mississippi National Guard, said the state plan is reviewed annually and adjusted accordingly.

"We end up taking the past, and then improving on it and make it better," Van said while overseeing brigade exercises at Camp Shelby this summer. "We took any kind of concerns anybody had or any kind of inconsistencies or inefficiencies that the Guard may have had, in terms of the civil-military relationships with the local populace here and with the politicians and all those immediate action guys.

"We understand that we're in support and we've taken all that and modified the plan to make it better. We've consistently connected with our leadership in the state to codify our role and to make sure that the commanding control and communications and expectations management are correct between what we're providing and what the needs are for the state of Mississippi."

Smith said while the lessons of Katrina have gone into the plans of today, a mitigating factor in any emergency starts with the preparation level of the population.

"We had a meeting the other day, and one thing that I pushed from my side was public education, teaching people to be prepared for at least three days," Smith said. "In the event of another Hurricane Katrina, it's three days before you can get supplies in because you have to get roads open.

So, you have to have something to keep yourself going for three days, and then we can start augmenting."

Latham said he had been on the Coast less than 48 hours before Katrina came ashore and saw people on the beach, apparently unconcerned about what was brewing in the Gulf of Mexico.

It was not until Hurricane Camille was referenced by the National Hurricane Center that people decidedly took notice.

"The one thing we don't know is how are people going to respond?" Latham asked. "That's the one thing we can't control. "For me, that's where my concern is. People get complacent. The further we get from Katrina, they forget how bad it was. Or, they're new to the Coast and don't understand how bad it is, try to ride it out, and then again, people die in a hurricane when they don't need to.

"Yes, we've built stronger. We've built better. We've built higher. We're not in flood zones. But people still need to evacuate, and if you do that, then if you have another breakdown during a historic event that's bigger than the last one, then nobody dies. Then, it's just a matter of cleaning up the mess and rebuilding."

Forrest County Sheriff Billy McGee said from what he saw after Katrina had passed, many people not only took care of themselves but each other as well.

"The governmental response, it could not have done near what people were doing themselves," McGee said. "They weren't standing around waiting for the government to come help them. They were doing the best they could with what they had to work with. Gas was a commodity. Food and water and ice were commodities, and even if you were prepared — as we had asked people to stand themselves up for three to five days — the response was a lot longer before you had electricity, before you had accommodations again.

"Everybody was looking to everybody else for some kind of support, and they were there for one another. It was a real comfort in this community, the response that we had."