Scars Still Remain Four Years After Katrina

Gulf Coast residents attend Hurricane Katrina vigil in Biloxi

Four years since Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast, communities and thousands of residents are still trying to pick up the pieces. MPB’s Phoebe Judge reports.

On a bright clear day Gulf Coast more than a hundred residents gathered in Biloxi on the grounds of what was once the Church of the Redeemer to commemorate the fourth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.

“To set ourselves free, to move forward, to step through despair to the portal of hope.”

The past four years has not been easy on Gulf Coast residents, and while progress has been made in the recovery it is in no way complete. Roberta Avila is a gulf coast residents and exec director of the non-profit group the Steps Coalition,

“We would love to be able to say four years post Katrina that everything is okay, but it is not. And that is the message that we want to carry today. Is that there are still thousands that have not recovered and that are struggling.”

One of those residents still struggling is George county resident Walter Polk. Polk lost his home during Katrina and has not been able to rebuild, so he is living in a shed on his property. He says the storm changed everything,

“Not just the landscape, people themselves changed. Including myself. It’s just life. But you know I got hope. I got hope. I know I will come back, and so will the Gulf Coast.”

But Polk says Katrina struck a kind of fear in the residents of the Gulf Coast that won’t easily be forgotten. Hurricane Katrina claimed more than 160 lives on the Coast, and left thousands homeless. In the past four years the federal government has spent 9.5 billion dollars helping to rebuild the devastated coastal counties.