James Patterson Smith
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- March 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781617030239
- eISBN:
- 9781617030246
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781617030239.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Environmental History
This book presents an account of the impact of Hurricane Katrina on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Rooted in oral histories, it tells the dramatic but underreported story of a people who confronted the ...
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This book presents an account of the impact of Hurricane Katrina on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Rooted in oral histories, it tells the dramatic but underreported story of a people who confronted the unprecedented devastation of sixty five thousand homes when the eye wall and powerful northeast quadrant of the hurricane swept a record thirty-foot storm surge across a seventy-five-mile stretch of unprotected Mississippi towns and cities. The author takes us through life-and-death accounts of storm day, August 29, 2005, and the precarious days of food and water shortages that followed. Along the way, the narrative presents episodes of neighborly compassion and creative responses to the greatest natural disaster in American history. The heroes of this saga are the local people and local officials. The book addresses the Mississippi Gulf Coast’s long struggle to remove a record-setting volume of debris and get on with the rebuilding of homes, schools, jobs, and public infrastructure. Along the way readers are offered insights into the politics of recovery funding and the bureaucratic bungling and hubris that afflicted the storm response, and which complicated and delayed the work of recovery. Still, there are ample accounts of things done well, and one chapter gives us a feel for the psychological, spiritual, and material impact of the eight hundred thousand people from across the nation who gave of themselves as volunteers in the Mississippi recovery effort.Less
This book presents an account of the impact of Hurricane Katrina on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Rooted in oral histories, it tells the dramatic but underreported story of a people who confronted the unprecedented devastation of sixty five thousand homes when the eye wall and powerful northeast quadrant of the hurricane swept a record thirty-foot storm surge across a seventy-five-mile stretch of unprotected Mississippi towns and cities. The author takes us through life-and-death accounts of storm day, August 29, 2005, and the precarious days of food and water shortages that followed. Along the way, the narrative presents episodes of neighborly compassion and creative responses to the greatest natural disaster in American history. The heroes of this saga are the local people and local officials. The book addresses the Mississippi Gulf Coast’s long struggle to remove a record-setting volume of debris and get on with the rebuilding of homes, schools, jobs, and public infrastructure. Along the way readers are offered insights into the politics of recovery funding and the bureaucratic bungling and hubris that afflicted the storm response, and which complicated and delayed the work of recovery. Still, there are ample accounts of things done well, and one chapter gives us a feel for the psychological, spiritual, and material impact of the eight hundred thousand people from across the nation who gave of themselves as volunteers in the Mississippi recovery effort.
