Hurricane Katrina and the Mississippi Gulf Coast

Hurricane Katrina made landfall near the Louisiana-Mississippi border on August twenty-ninth, two thousand five, as a large Category Three storm with a storm surge that exceeded anything in the region's recorded history. While the world's attention focused on the flooding of New Orleans, the worst wind and surge damage from Katrina fell on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

The storm surge along the Mississippi shoreline reached heights of twenty-four to twenty-eight feet in some areas, exceeding even Camille's nineteen sixty-nine surge. Because the land along the Gulf Coast between Gulfport and Pascagoula is essentially flat for miles inland, the surge moved inland as far as six to twelve miles in places. Structures that had survived Camille were destroyed. The Biloxi Lighthouse, which had stood since eighteen forty-eight, was damaged but survived. Much of what the Camille survivors had rebuilt over thirty-six years was gone.

In Mississippi, Katrina killed approximately two hundred thirty-eight people. The precise number of deaths specifically within the Biloxi-Gulfport metropolitan area in the accessible public record is not fully broken out in the sources available here; the statewide figure is what is firmly documented. The death toll was lower than New Orleans partly because many Mississippi coastal residents had evacuated. But many did not, and many of those who sheltered in what they believed were sturdy inland structures were found by the surge.

The casinos, which by two thousand five had become the economic center of the coast, suffered severe damage. Their floating structures, required by Mississippi gaming law to be on water, were carried inland by the surge and deposited on the highway. In the days after landfall, national news coverage showed casino hulls sitting on top of cars on Highway Ninety, a particular image of the storm's indifferent power.

Mississippi received federal disaster aid and began rebuilding quickly. The gaming industry, which had political and financial incentives to rebuild, was operational within months at most properties. The residential recovery took years. Beauvoir's restoration took three years. The Biloxi Lighthouse was restored. The beach and the highway were cleared. The Gulf Coast rebuilt itself, as it had after Camille, into a shape that looked like before but was not quite the same.