‘Utter obliteration,’ former MS governor recalls on Katrina’s 20th anniversary
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- Former Gov. Haley Barbour recounted Katrina's toll during Gulfport ceremony
- Mississippi secured $25.5B in federal aid through bipartisan congressional backing
- Barbour emphasized local resilience, praising recovery efforts across the coast
Haley Barbour, the governor who led Mississippi through the nation’s single costliest disaster, Hurricane Katrina, remembered those grim days after the storm when he spoke Thursday to Gulfport employees at a 20th anniversary cookout.
After the cookout, he said, he would be going up in a Mississippi National Guard helicopter, as he did the day after the hurricane. He planned to once again survey the coastline from the Pearl River in Hancock County to Ingalls Shipbuilding in Pascagoula. He recollected for the crowd what he saw in 2005.
“I will never forget what it looked like,” the former Republican governor said. “It was utter obliteration. It looked like the hand of God had wiped the Gulf Coast off the map.”
Barbour will be one of the speakers at the 20th Anniversary Commemoration of Hurricane Katrina that Gov. Tate Reeves is hosting, beginning at 8:25 a.m. Friday at Barksdale Pavilion in Gulfport Harbor, which was completely rebuilt with federal funds after the hurricane.
Other featured speakers are National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard and Maj. Gen. Bobby Ginn of the Mississippi National Guard.
The city hosted its cookout Thursday for 620 employees, including first responders. On the helicopter after the storm, Barbour told them, his thoughts were very much on recovery and what lay ahead.
Katrina’s devastation recalled
What if Chevron and Ingalls didn’t come back to Pascagoula, Barbour wondered. What if the Seabee based moved from Gulfport, or Keesler Air Force Base closed?
In Gulfport, many downtown buildings appeared somewhat intact in the monster hurricane’s wake. But water had rushed through the interiors, he said, sometimes up to three stories high.
Barbour, a consummate politician who was in his first term as governor, wasted little time reaching out to his extensive contacts in Washington. Barbour had previously served as chairman of the Republican National Committee and worked with Sen. Thad Cochran, then head of the Appropriations Committee, to secure financial relief for the devastated state.
Gulfport Mayor Hugh Keating introduced Barbour at the cookout and will also participate in Friday’s ceremony. Keating said, “God put him in the right place at the right time.”
In an interview after his speech Thursday, Barbour recalled presenting Mississippi’s recovery plan to President George Bush at the White House back in 2005, then heading to the Capitol. He encountered Sen. Barney Frank of Massachusetts standing beside the elevator. Frank, whom Barbour described as the most liberal of Democrats, asked for a copy of Mississippi’s plan and said he would write to his fellow Democratic members of Congress to say he was supporting it and wanted them to as well.
“We got an incredible amount of help through Congress,” Barbour said, noting Mississippi secured $25.5 billion in federal funds.
He also acknowledged FEMA’s contribution to Mississippi’s recovery, but said he does not know enough about President Donald Trump’s plans for FEMA to discuss how states will manage if the agency’s budget is slashed.
As recovery progressed, Barbour was fond of saying that Mississippi Coast residents “hitched up their britches.” He trotted out the phrase again during his speech Thursday, saying, “Mississippians, who got knocked down flat, got up, hitched up their britches and went to work helping themselves and helping their neighbors.”
