Barbour mesmerizes students with Katrina recollections

Former Gov. Haley Barbour held a large audience spellbound at the Mississippi eCenter at Jackson State University Thursday night as he recounted the days after Hurricane Katrina devastated the state a decade ago.
“When I saw it,” riding in a helicopter immediately after the worst natural disaster in U.S. history struck the Mississippi Gulf Coast Aug. 29, 2005, he said, “it looked to me that this must be what Hiroshima looked like.”
Shipping containers, boxes, furniture, houses, boats and even an entire casino on a barge had been tossed ashore, he said.
State officials had received a warning in a report that a buoy miles offshore had recorded a 50-foot wave — the highest ever recorded. But the area had already had two false alarms — with hurricanes Ivan and Dennis causing people to evacuate but veering off. People were reluctant to pack up and leave the Coast again.
“We didn’t think it could get any worse than Camille,” he said, referring to the 1969 storm that had been the worst hurricane to hit the state. But Katrina was actually one storm but two disasters. It had winds powerful enough to collapse the roof of the Emergency Operations Center on the Coast that had withstood Camille and a storm surge that created a 38-foot wave — twice as high as Camille — crashing ashore.
“Mississippi got knocked flat,” Barbour said.
Hurricane winds stretched 200 miles inland. Nearly every county in the state was declared a disaster area. Waveland, where Katrina made landfall, was wiped clean. Some 64,000 homes on the coast were made uninhabitable. Damages topped $32 billion.
Katrina created a new verb, he said. Across the region, people said, “I got slabbed.”
There were slabs for as far as the eye could see, where there once were houses.
When he got off the helicopter, he said, he saw news veteran Bert Case, who had witnessed Camille and had been viewing the scene in another helicopter. Barbour said that he and Case, who he called “grizzled newsman,” just looked at each other and wept.
Barbour, the featured speaker for Jackson State University’s Mike Espy Scholars-in-Residence Series, however, told the audience that Mississippians didn’t just grieve after the disaster.
While New Orleans got the nation’s attention for its flooding, Mississippians “hitched up their britches” and tackled the job of rebuilding, said Barbour, who has written a book about Katrina that will be published in August.
By the middle of October, every school reopened except for two, which had no buildings in which to hold classes. In Washington, Barbour and the state’s congressional delegation — including Sen. Trent Lott and Rep. Gene Taylor, whose homes were destroyed — wrangled an unprecedented aid package. It was unprecedented because the amount of damage by a hurricane was unprecedented, he said. And, he added, “I made some mistakes.”
That was one of the lessons of Katrina, he said. With unprecedented decisions, mistakes are unavoidable. But among the successes was a body of knowledge on how to respond to such a disaster. Lessons include: having one person in charge to avoid chaos; having communications in place allowing various agencies to communicate; if you make a bad decision, be unafraid to alter it or reverse it; get a strong team and trust it; let friends help you, accept their aid, regardless of political label or standing; give people credit for their work; be truthful, no matter what — people will accept an honest assessment however discouraging, but don’t “guild the lily,” since once credibility is lost, it’s difficult to regain.
Most important, of the 231 Mississippi deaths, he said, 170 were on the Coast and nearly every one would be alive today if they had evacuated.
Barbour was the third speaker in the Espy Series. He was introduced by former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Mike Espy, for whom the series is named. A panel composed of officials who served in the aftermath also shared lessons. They included JSU Associate Vice President for Public Safety Lindsey Horton, who was assistant Jackson police chief at the time, Case, emergency officials Robert Latham and Ricky Moore, and United Way of the Capital Area Carol Burger. All had gripping stories to tell.
Two Toyota-Haley Barbour Scholarships students were in the audience. Phylana Adams, a freshman in chemical engineering, and Taylor Turley, a freshman in chemistry, were unfamiliar with the extent of the damage.
Adams, from Maryland, and Turley, from Missouri, had watched events from afar.
But Ashlee Theodore, a Ph.D. student in Public Policy, remembered it vividly. She had just moved to Jackson from New Orleans. She remembered the power going off, with her family staying with her to escape the storm. They had to go to the Coliseum for food and books to read.
She watched in horror on television the devastation of her hometown. “It was heartbreaking to see everything you ever knew to be wiped out,” she said.
Dr. Otha Burton, executive director, JSU Institute of Government, said that Barbour will return in April as part of the Series, speaking with a student panel.
If a lesson for overcoming challenges such as Katrina can be found, Burton noted, it’s the power and importance in politics of finding middle ground.