in a week, that is when we got back to pascagoula. that is when i saw the water over my mother's hospital bed. just what i could get off of the walls is what i took. a few pictures. a clock. i would not even let my mama see what it looked like. we do not have any pictures of the family. we had to close that we had taken and the clothing on our backs. weave very grateful that went to stay with my sister in mississippi, which is between malls point and lose dale. we found a small double wide and took it. we slept on air mattresses until i could get a bed, a hospital bed. my mother's hospice group was washed away. three months before she could get another hospital bed. i got a job there. we build back a little bit. my mother died in 2009, after the hurricane, i came to work in mobile at a nursing home. now, i am in the nursing home because i had a stroke. that wehe main things both did not tell each other how much shock it was by seeing a few pictures about two years later. depressed.ame very that was our family. we were in shock. was pr

suffered the utter obliteration that katrina carried with it all across the gulf coast from pearlington to pascagoula, every community devastated. hurricane force winds more than almost 200 miles north, north of meridian. 47 of our counties were major disaster areas as far north as columbus and starville. you know, you don't celebrate a terrible calamity like this. we commemorate it, we remember it, but i'm here to tell you there are things about katrina that we should celebrate every day. celebrate the strong, self-reliant people of mississippi who got knocked flat by this awful disaster. and yet they got right back up and hitched up their britches and went to work. importantly, they went to work helping themselves, but also they went to work helping their neighbors and their communities. but i can tell you those strong, resilient people could not have done it without you. they could not have done it without you. and it is altogether fitting and proper that we would be here today to thank you and, indeed, to celebrate the fact that there were thousands, thousands of first responders like you who did

you can go from biloxi to mississippi, to gulf port, to pascagoula. so many of these beautiful antebellum homes up and down the coastline destroyed. they survived a civil war. they survived the great depression. they survived the onslaught of hurricane camille in 1969. but friends, they were reduced to rubble. if you go to new orleans tonight, 85 miles southwest of us, i'm telling you, a lot of people are talking about how that is the city out of control. >> they don't us go to the superdome. if you want to be rescued, now they're telling us go to the bridge. we have very few resources. >> get us out of here. we want out of here. >> tulane university professor doug brinkley who is one of new orleans residents who evacuated. tell me about the horrific scenes you saw in your hometown of new orleans. >> well, just got back to houston where my family is at, and i have been listening to you. if some people think you're overstating or talking about hiburballh hyperbo hyperbole, you're not. >> we brought over 1,000 bottles of water and passed it out to anybo