Beyond Katrina is made possible by a grant from Chevron.

Chevron is proud to be the sole underwriter of this ongoing series about the determination of our friends and neighbors.

Chevron and its employees partnering to rebuild Mississippi.

On this edition of Beyond Katrina.

From churches to spring breakers.

Volunteers from around the country are the lifeblood of coastal recovery.

Janet Parker tells us that fish populations are drowning in debris left by the hurricane.

A conversation with an environmentalist who has big ideas on sustainable community.

And Jean Edwards rides along for a bird's eye view of the coast.

Seven months after the storm.

Hello, I'm John Johnson, and this is Beyond Katrina, our series devoted to Mississippi's recovery and renewal in the wake of one of the nation's worst natural disasters.

In the seven months since Katrina.

Hundreds of thousands of volunteers from around the world have helped in our recovery.

They've done everything from carrying water to answering phones to administering medicine.

Many of these volunteers have organized and come here through their churches.

But we begin tonight with a different group of young people.

College kids who are learning a lot about civil service.

Springtime.

There's nothing like the first game of the season.

But this isn't any ordinary ball field.

And these folks aren't any ordinary grounds.

Crew.

A team of volunteers and the University of Nebraska repair this roughed up diamond.

The one in kill, the one damaged by Katrina.

It feels good.

Like you do it, and you come back with a sense of gratification.

They thought we could do a lot of good, setting up a whole new camp and helping with the field.

They're looking at maybe 20,000 people coming through this area that this camp in the next 6 to 18 months.

And our job was to help set it up.

Every one of the students that have come on this trip, had to pay $150 just to come down here.

They don't have a lot of money anyway for them to do.

It was a really big, big deal to me.

And you see it in real life.

It's kind of overwhelming.

And really it's it's it's become more real to me.

You know, everything that's happened to make sure they didn't strike out in Mississippi.

The team worked with county officials as they plan their trip and their tasks.

Hancock Volunteer Center at the emergency operations Center.

AmeriCorps volunteers are busy on an entirely different project.

We're working to, create more efficient coordinating of volunteers within the county, especially, this time of year.

There are a lot of people coming down for spring breaks.

So it's a lot of volunteers that are looking for work to do.

And we want to be able to use all those people in the best way possible.

We're just starting the organization now.

And so we're trying to make it so that by the time we leave, it'll be orderly and simple for the team to take over and just continue on with whatever we're doing.

These kids are with the America's national civilian community Corps.

They're all between 18 and 24, and they serve their country for one year.

I think it was just the overall my lack of community service tied with the fact of the president's call to community service.

I kind of wanted to, average those out a little bit better in my own life, and this seemed like a natural course to go do it.

Joe Williams lost his home in the storm.

Now he's volunteer coordinator for the county.

And the AmeriCorps crews report to him.

I'm overwhelmed with their efforts.

They have come in, and they've been a great addition to our staff.

And also they're going to help us working towards networking with all the groups that are on the grounds right now.

As a staffer for the Mississippi Commission for Volunteer Services.

Robert Renfro works with Joe and many others.

He travels the coast, assisting in any way he can to ensure the best for victims and for volunteers.

And you could you could organize your stay in advance.

A lot of a lot of the people who are down here and have housing right now plan for months out in advance.

And they, brought their own food.

They brought they brought their own bedding.

If you if you do some preparation that goes a long way towards having a positive experience and towards not putting a burden on the organization that you work with.

Here's another group that planned ahead.

MTV worked with United Way to organize 100 college kids for the network's first alternative spring break.

If you just watch on TV and you say, oh, it's, you know, it's so sad, you know what's happened to them.

You're a part of those people who aren't doing anything.

So you can't sit around complaining and not do anything about it, especially in this day and age.

We have colleagues that are a little bit more pressing than even those of our parents time.

I could be just doing the same stuff I do every year, but this is so much better.

And like, hearing their stories like, really inspires you.

It's like it's amazing.

Everybody should come down here.

We wanted to do something different.

We wanted to turn it on its head this year and bring young people here to the Gulf Coast.

I'm really scared of bugs, and I'm like, really like a girly girl.

But, but, but helping these people is work for me.

And talking to the people.

That's what I get out of it.

Okay, no swing.

Keep your eye on the ball.

Good hear here.

When they see the result of their efforts, these young people are heartened.

They know the score.

Some of life's most important lessons are learned outside of the classroom.

I'm learning a lot about myself and how I interact with people, especially people who I can't get away from.

People here, they don't have a test, they don't have a house.

And, you know, they don't have anywhere to go or anything to do except for rebuild their house and try to start over and, you know, and just kind of puts it in perspective.

Real life applications going out there doing everything and, and, you know, some things you just can't learn in school.

You realize that these people don't.

They lost all their worldly possessions, but they're still upbeat and like, you can take that with you like that.

You don't have to have everything that society says.

You have to have to be happy.

You know, this spring break is going to resonate in my mind forever.

Forever and ever.

And I'm going to be able to live with myself.

The sounds of songs and hammers signify signs of hope and renewal for many in South Mississippi.

But for many, professional contractors are unaffordable or unattainable.

That's why these volunteers from churches across the country are a welcome sight.

And the people inside Gateway United Methodist Church in Gulfport can be credited with helping organize this rebuilding effort.

Reverend Elijah Mitchell, and his wife, Miriam, run that office.

And it was the first thing that the bishop asked us to set up here at gateway.

And, originally, it was running the entire relief effort on the coast, coordinating the entire relief effort for all of the counties.

But now it's one of four, and so it's a little more manageable.

We are in, I think, sometimes what we call abnormal conditions in some places, and everything is not as normal as person who was not involved in this disaster.

So they think everything is frozen just naturally and normally.

It's always but not with us and a lot of people.

So you have to be flexible and adjust to the situation.

Volunteer groups typically come down for a week at a time.

They're encouraged to bring building supplies, work clothes and their own bedding.

The church women in our church had given us money, and we spent all of it on supplies because a lot of the people don't have supplies.

And then we went home and just wrote to our family members and said, send us money.

And they sent us money, and, you need it because the dry walling and the door doors and all the things are terribly expensive.

The volunteers we followed hailed from Indiana, Illinois and Pennsylvania.

They were working at a home in Perkinson, Mississippi, that had sustained heavy water damage when the roof was ripped apart by Katrina.

So far, we've been in the homes of, three different people and every one of them is, extremely grateful, I guess not only for the, work that you do, but just, for the, fact that you're there and care enough to come.

That's a blessing from the Lord.

But there, because, you know, people drive all the way from in there to down here just to help you.

I've never seen nothing like it.

It's not only the Methodist church that's lending a helping hand.

Churches of every denomination, from Catholic to Presbyterian to Lutheran and Episcopalian, are all coming together to help rebuild the Gulf Coast.

The good part of this whole thing is seeing people working together.

And, I know in Pascagoula, when I was there, we were out of a methodist church in Illinois.

We were sleeping in a Baptist church, eating in a Church of Christ feeding station and, repairing homes for.

We didn't know who.

And it was, the body in action.

It's been great to help people and, I've really enjoyed working with families and also repairing a church in Waveland.

And just the destruction is has been really incredible to see.

It looks like it just happened last week, but we know someone's been clean The windows are open, right?

I thought we'd have one who's been blessed.

And we are.

But as a team leave out.

And even during the course of stay here, they were constant.

So, you know, we get more out of this then and then we get a lot out of this.

We have been blessed.

And I keep wondering, are you being blessed?

And we don't want who's suffering down here.

But for most of team, you know, if I could say a bit I got more out it, you know, just by being here.

Homeowners on the coast usually find out about these volunteer groups by word of mouth.

Priority is given to the neediest of families.

But not to worry, these religious based volunteers don't plan on pulling out anytime soon.

I think our kind of groups are in it for the long haul.

Red cross and FEMA and all those come in right after disaster.

But for rebuilding and stuff, it seems like, a lot of the faith groups are the ones that, stick around and and, stick with it.

And, we'll be here probably for three or 4 or 5 years for beyond Katrina.

I'm Kelly Markham.

Thanks to Kelly Markham of MPB news for helping to bring us that story.

If you would like to volunteer your time or donate building supplies, you can contact the resource center at 1-866-435-7091.

We'll also include links to many other volunteer organizations at our website at MPB online.org.

Hurricane Katrina left an estimated 46,000,000yd of debris in Mississippi, while more than 70% of the remnants are cleared statewide.

In Hancock County, where the storm came in, debris removal is not even half finished.

Teresa Carty of MPB news takes a look at the cleanup effort and tells us where all that debris is going.

Driving through the streets of Bay Saint Louis in Hancock County, you find yourself surrounded by ruin.

Hurricane Katrina left literally thousands of uninhabitable, obliterated homes on the Gulf Coast.

The eye of the storm was more than 30 miles wide, and Bay Saint Louis Mayor Eddie Forbes says the destruction to his town was massive.

We lost probably, a thousand homes.

Just totally lost, another thousand homes, more than 50% damaged.

And the balance of them had, some sort of damage, if not extensive, at least minor type damage.

At the request of city and county officials.

Debris removal in Hancock County has been tasked to the Army Corps of Engineers.

They've been demolishing severely damaged or destroyed homes on private property and removing the debris.

Bay Saint Louis has, as the motto, A place apart.

Because of Hurricane Katrina, it is now a place torn apart.

This neighborhood is about a block from the beach.

Floodwaters moved through this area, lifting homes from their foundations and splintering them across their neighbors yards.

When the water receded, it left behind piles and piles of debris.

The question now is where does it all go?

This is one of five landfills or reduction sites in Hancock County.

Truckloads of hurricane debris are dumped daily on this site.

You have a track tracker operator over there that unloads it.

The, He takes the debris.

He fans it on the ground into a, a pile about knee deep.

And then we have people walk through the pile and look to separate anything that has an oil based product in it, like trolling base tires to reduce the amount of debris in the landfill.

Much of the rubble is either burned or chipped into mulch.

Lynch says the goal is to prevent any further or future damage to the environment.

You've got to protect what's here 20 years from now in this pits, old and I'm gone.

This will probably become a soccer field for a bunch of kids here.

And the kill.

And you don't want hazardous materials underneath it.

To date, about three point 8,000,000yd of debris has been removed in Hancock County alone.

Henry Schroeder's wood framed house sits near the Jordan River.

Katrina's massive storm surge lifted it off its slab and moved it about 40ft.

What was your reaction when you came back and saw on it?

I was at my daughter's and I looked on the TV, you know, the internet, and I saw, well, it looks it looks a little catty office, but it looks like it's still there.

So not thinking that this catty whomp.

It's meant something.

And when I got here and saw this about 1030 at night, it's very depressing.

Schroeder is now waiting for the Corps of Engineers to demolish his severely damaged home until they remove this.

Where are you in terms of rebuilding?

I can't do a thing because that's about what the house is going to go up and doing.

So this.

I'm just in limbo now until they get here.

We're on a storm path, a glide path to try to be through, with everything, that's in this county by the 31st of May, 1st June.

That's our mark on the wall, if you will.

That's our goal that we were trying to achieve, to have everything out.

Bay Saint Louis Mayor Eddie Farve is hopeful the June 1st goal will be met.

He says his community cannot rebuild until the debris is cleared.

We have a lot of folks that that want to come back, but until their property is cleared and, they can't do the rebuilding, they can't do the clearing themselves until we make our people home.

They don't have the opportunity.

And I think that if we and we said it from the beginning, that if we give them the opportunity, the vast majority of the people will come back home.

It's still home.

They lost their houses, but they still have their home.

And that's Bay Saint Louis.

We're beyond Katrina.

I'm Teresa Collier, MPB news.

Later in the program, we'll take a bird's eye.

Look at the coast seven months after the storm.

But first, as coastal cities begin their rebuilding process, plans for a sustainable community are on the drawing board.

Jeanne Edwards talks with Mississippi 2020 executive Director Bob ski about the long range vision needed to bring the Gulf Coast together again.

Bob, thank you for joining us.

Your Mississippi 2020 organization has been involved in the idea of sustainable communities for a long time.

What are your fears and what are your hopes as you look at what's going on on the coast right now?

I see the positive side of the of the of Katrina, the putting the coast in the situation that it's in now can it can help them look and see the past and then what do we need to do so that the children of the future, have a better life situation than we do?

So as they are working on rebuilding, what do they need to do?

Well, we we're fixed in our.

And our idea is most people would only want to go back, clean the house out, build it back the same way it was.

I mean, we need to think about, solar panels on the roofs so that the energy cost less.

Water conservation, a variety of things.

The good, the, you know, the the, I think it is the lead, standards.

The, the they're they have all have laws so that no, no building is built unless it meets Leed standards.

Is is the environment ever going to be pristine again down there?

Will it ever be safe to drink the water, to eat the fish, to to swim and and play the way that people the, the, the natural world has a way of recovering from things of this sort over a period of time.

I'm more worried about the people.

The only way the the coast is going to be a place that is known all over the country and, and is deeply appreciated by themselves, is when the entire communities on the coast become one family.

They are.

They got to realize we're all connected.

We're not only connected to us, but we're connected to all the people of the world.

Okay.

The issue about sustainability is that the humans have this thought we're in charge, and we're not in charge.

Don't, don't breathe for half an hour.

We're dependent on air, right?

Don't drink any water for a month.

You'll die.

We're totally dependent on the gifts of the natural world.

So sustainability is living in cans.

And the, What is living?

Living in ways that, allows the natural world to re establish itself.

Trees to grow, you know, cut down more trees, then we'll grow back, you know, fish, more fish than we'll grow back.

But people down there now are, are want to be in a hurry that they feel this tremendous urgency to get things done right away.

And so consequently, I think they believe that the shortcuts would be all right if they if they have all the, the, the good, sense of having a long term vision of the possibilities and that are needed.

They want to do it the right way, the slow way, and that is the sustainable way.

Tell me your vision of the coast.

Well, like I said, it will be a that people will say, you know, they have different names Biloxi, Ocean Springs.

But it's like a big family and the air flows everywhere.

The water flows everywhere.

It's a big idea.

Can you make it work?

With it and all the new ideas like that have been started all during history by a handful of people.

So if the right small number of people get it started by Bob, thanks to you.

Thank you for having me.

Coming up later on beyond Katrina, we will tell you how some college students are bringing a vision of their own to community planning on the coast.

Let us also remind you that you can find much of the information featured on this program on our website at MPB online.org, as well as ways you can become a contributor to Beyond Katrina.

Well, since the hurricane, fishermen and state agencies are worried about the local sea harvest, including shrimp, crab, and especially oysters.

And what about Mississippi's endangered species?

Janet Parker of Mississippi Outdoors has the story.

You may think that most of the damage from Hurricane Katrina occurred to homes and businesses and roads and just in plain sight, but little was known about the impact the hurricane had under the water on our crab and oyster populations.

That's why an unprecedented search to find these populations and see how they're doing is well underway, right after the storm.

We started working with the EC and the research lab, gathering fish, shrimp, crabs and oysters and we're doing a catch per unit effort study to see how efficient the crab pipe fishery is, how efficient the air is through this project, we're able to find, number one, we can put these oyster fishermen back to work.

That also will allow us to determine what damage that we have as a result of Hurricane Katrina.

And we can plan our, restoration efforts across all of them.

The hurricane pretty much wiped out most of the seafood industry.

A lot of shrimp boat and most of the processing plants picking houses.

A lot of them have been hit very badly.

On a personal level, some of the lost their homes lost their boats as well.

We've oysters, are on the bottom.

They don't move.

And they were.

They took the the brunt of the the storm, hurricane can cover up areas with siltation and debris.

It can scour out areas, it can scatter, the shell and the are and we're in all of that.

But once the oyster gets covered up with mud like that, it's just just going to die.

And if there's no marsh to dissipate next year, they won't be a good season next year.

Right now, they're giving a position data with the bottom type data.

So they have GPS units on their boat.

And they're letting us know what the bottom type is, whether it's hard sand, whether it's soft mud, whether it's shell, whether where they feel there's live oysters are there.

And from that information, we'll make a map out of it.

And it will give us a better idea of what we have out here.

We know the areas.

We just don't know what's on the area.

So this is a good opportunity for us to go out and see what's on the areas and see which part has shells left and which parts, you know, just have nothing.

The sampling has been done in the bays, in the estuaries.

They were sent to Jax and then tested.

It takes a month to do each of those test.

And we did two separate months and everything came back good except for the oysters.

As for heavy metals and, bacteria counts.

Unfortunately, Scott's resource did not fare as well as the other resources that do have a tail and can swim and can move, and the oysters have to have something a good clean surface which to attach to at the larval stage.

And we saw a pretty good oyster space that that's right after Hurricane Katrina.

You know, that's a positive.

The.

So in the future, we're looking about 18, 24 months down the line for those who to be marketable size.

But it's still going to take many years for us to rebuild the oyster reefs.

I think the main thing now is, is just people's, perception of it.

It's just more getting people back.

Used to eating seafood around here.

And hopefully we will be able to get some assistance from the federal agency so that we will be able to buy materials, coach material, which is oyster shells, crushed limestone or crushed cement.

And we spray it off barges with high pressure hoses to reestablish our oyster reefs.

And we want to try and do that as early as this spring if the money is available.

It's been a success because we've been able to generate and gather a lot of data over a short period of time, and it also puts us one step closer to restoring the reef areas.

And I'm hoping to involve some of these oyster fishermen in the future.

And part of the restoration efforts.

While our seafood industry is trying to pick up the pieces from our saltwater habitat, our freshwater habitats were also affected by the storm.

A large fish kill occurred both during and after Katrina made landfall, distressing many species of fish, including Mississippi sturgeon.

Population.

The most extensive damage was in the lower Pascagoula.

In addition to your, normal fish that were seen during this fish kill, there were several Gulf sturgeon, which are federally listed species.

A dozen reported sightings from I-10 north to around Columbus Bluff, even up to, areas around Wade Van Cleave, where they tend to hang out during that time of the year.

Mike Abbott and Len McCoy, members of the Mississippi Department Wildlife and Fisheries, were on the water shortly after Katrina doing surveys of fishermen and, local residents to make sure that they were in good shape.

And they happened to have a video camera with them.

And they took some pretty good footage of the fish kill that occurred following Katrina, including a number of Gulf sturgeon that were reported dead.

During that being the only thing with, with respect to Hurricane Katrina, there was a very powerful storm.

But, you know, luckily we don't see those storms every year.

And fish kills are a natural occurrence.

And that usually in response to dissolved oxygen levels being decreased, even though the hurricane did affect the salt and freshwater populations of southern Mississippi, officials are confident that it will make a full recovery.

In fact, you can expect industry and recreation to rebound and be just as good, if not even better, than it was before.

Through this effort, we'll learn a little bit more about oysters, crab and the endangered sturgeon of the deep for Beyond Katrina.

I'm Janet Parker.

Later in the program, Walt Grayson is looking for direction.

Farm week introduces some Mississippi State students who have a new vision for the coast.

Felder rushing and Doctor Dirt break in a new assistant.

Books are arriving while teachers are leaving, and an eight year old is singing the blues.

Well, the first images most of us saw the aftermath of Katrina were those aerial shots taken by Quint Bailey and Joe Root of Mercury Aviation.

Their copter was on the coast the day after Katrina hit.

That's when we first saw the Grand Casino in Gulfport, lying across highway 90.

The president Casino on top of the Holiday Inn, the Grand Casino Biloxi, tossed up onto highway 90 and the bridge into Ocean Springs washed away by Katrina.

Those are images we'll never forget seven months after Katrina.

We wonder what those places look like now.

Here's Jean Edwards.

All right.

It's Captain Bailey, and photographer Joe Root were among the first to see what was left of the coast after Katrina made landfall.

We made our flight on a sunlit morning almost seven months later.

It's important to have this perspective.

You know that the aerial perspective is so important in covering this kind of disaster.

I don't know that you get this kind of feel for the scope and breadth of the of the damage without seeing it the way you could see it for 5 or 600ft above the ground, but you don't really get the sense of it until you actually walk through the the damaged neighborhoods or destroyed neighborhoods on the ground.

So it's a very different perspective that you really need a boat to appreciate what's gone out here.

At 1000ft, you can see the blue rooftops, the debris fires, the thousands of trees down and rotting.

We're on the Jordan River just outside Diamondhead is that boat is now out in the trees, and none of the trees around it are actually broken.

Which means that that boat came out over the tops of those trees, and that was dropped.

And you see how tall those trees are?

It's it's a pretty high water.

And this is where it gets pretty bad.

It's a remarkable day to fly here at 1800 feet.

You can see from the New Orleans skyline to the west, all the way to the bow Rivage in Biloxi to the east, almost all of Mississippi's 70 mile coastline.

You can see where the storm surge roared in up the river, killing the vegetation.

Everything's brown from here south to the beach.

The brown line goes up for five miles in some places.

As you looked out, now there's almost got a sinkhole structure, or the remains of a structure that doesn't have a trailer parked next to it.

And almost every structure down here has damage of some sort.

Yeah, and there just seems to be so few signs of life still.

And this is almost seven months later.

That's right.

This is Waveland.

This is kind of the western side of Waveland.

This was the area that was completely destroyed.

The only structures you see down there have been put up since Katrina, whether they're, tents or pretty much trailers or up to our temporary building.

So it was the second day when you made the turn down here to Waveland.

Tell me, tell me what you saw when you got down here.

It wasn't vastly different than it is today.

Short of take the trailers away at, take the blue tarps away.

This is what we saw.

The roadways were all blocked, with debris.

So you didn't see any vehicles moving down here?

But other than that, it was, it was like it is today.

By the time hurricane season starts again, there could be 45,000 FEMA trailers on the coast.

By summer, almost 122,000 people may be living in temporary housing.

And where will they go if there's another hurricane?

Captain Quint had been working on the coast the week before Katrina hit, the Friday that was down there.

Was it, the bay, Saint Louis, the park?

That was right.

The old town right there.

On the beach.

And, went into a little boutique shop.

I bet our town for a week.

And I bought my wife a shirt just as a one of those presents that you buy when you know you've been away from home too long.

Okay, I know, I know, and, this, woman at the shop, I ended up staying and talking to her, and she's just a very pleasant, but but the owner shop very small.

I was the only person in there.

It was just an old building, an old, structure.

And it was just a very quaint, nice little bay.

Saint Louis saying.

And, we went back over that, Wednesday.

And just looking at it was so hard, I could tell that the store that destroyed it and, just wondering what had happened to her.

So many neighborhoods are just gone, along with the highway 90 bridge and the stately homes of Pointe Henderson.

Nothing but slabs now.

The pouring sand on to the beaches to preserve what's left.

And strangely, there's one section along the beach, Corpus Christi, and meets Long Beach, where some of the homes took water but managed to hold themselves together.

Everyone has a different idea of how that progress should take form.

The auto insurance companies decide what they will insure and monitor.

And so zoning commission, the planning board, to decide how these communities should be rebuilt.

People find themselves in a state of limbo, where they've lost their home and yet found themselves unable to begin rebuilding.

Usm's Long Beach campus is destroyed.

The VA hospital, two.

We're coming to the Port of Gulfport right here, between where we are now at Long Beach and up towards the Port of Gulfport.

There was the largest concentration of debris at the water.

It's all 18 wheelers.

Containers, roofs.

It seems to have all been drawn out of the shallows here, out into the deeper water.

And we've not.

No one has told us that there has been any effort to remove the debris, from what was at the water.

So we can only assume that it's, just drug out into the deeper water.

This is where we saw the casino sitting across highway 90, right at Gulfport.

Right at, It took a long time, but they were able to completely disassemble that whole structure at open highway 30.

And you notice from the bridge back there, past Christi and all the way to the other side of Biloxi, highway 90 is open that it's, a fair amount of traffic there.

Pick up, I doubt it.

I heard that there's one house along the beach front here at I believe.

That's it.

Back to our left that they have moved back into their home.

And I believe that's the one.

Went home right along the beach right here.

That is now that avenue.

They've removed the remains of the president casino from what was the Holiday Inn?

Further east toward Biloxi.

The lighthouse stands.

The debris here at Biloxi was unbelievable.

How how deep it was.

That was just solid glass covering this entire.

But that's all that that sticks out into the bay at the Gulf here.

We were about to turn north toward Jackson after the first two trips down here last September, Coyote and Joe changed their mission.

For the next few weeks, they carried in emergency medical supplies.

Quite says it hit them in waves.

The impact this storm would have on people's lives.

There was no way to prepare for it.

He was asked by a TV station to report what he saw.

All he could say was everything's gone.

What are your thoughts?

As you look at it one more time.

It's, you know, you have so many thoughts that, it's remarkable that that people are back here rebuilding, that they can get up and do this every day, that, that plans are in the works at that zoning commission.

They're building at that.

And we're moving forward with our plans to rebuild.

But it's also overwhelming when you come down that monthly intervals that that see how much there is to do and how widespread that habitat destruction is.

And it's just seemingly endless as to what needs to be done.

So it's, you know, what's that?

It's it's heartening and that that activity is taking place or that things are getting cleaned up, but you also realize what a very long way we have to go for beyond Katrina.

I'm Jean Edwards.

Later, Walt Grayson, we'll cruise the coast by car and show us how finding your way around is not as easy as it used to be.

Now, though, the effects of Hurricane Katrina are taking a toll on Gulf Coast schools, MPB news reporter Gary Michelle tells us that the loss of students and a viable tax base in the Hancock and Harrison County school districts could result in teacher layoffs.

The population of Bay Saint Louis was cut in half by Hurricane Katrina's high waves and strong winds.

There are fewer families and fewer students, and because of decreased enrollments, the Bay Waveland School District may have to layoff schoolteachers.

I don't think that I'll have the money to be able to employ those teachers, so it's going to be a hard decision, but I foresee that there will be some teachers eliminated.

I truly believe that that Katrina did more damage than just tear up buildings.

It it really destroyed education.

For those 47 days at North Bay elementary in the Bay Waveland school system, Patricia Barrett has more than 20 years of teaching experience.

She has only been at North Bay just over a year.

She believes she'll be one of the first teachers to be laid off.

It breaks my heart if I can't live here, because this is where I had decided that this is where I'm supposed to be.

And if I can't stay here, I don't I don't know where I'm going to go.

And, and, I very much want to rebuild here, and I want to stay teaching here.

I mean, I really don't know what I'm going to do.

The enlargement of classes means that maybe every one of the four children in there might know that sitting in the front might understand something, and then the rest might not get it.

In Biloxi, as in Bay Saint Louis, fewer students damaged schools and a lower tax base are going to result in teacher layoffs.

Mom will lose some good, exuberant teachers.

Really bright teachers out of that have come to us recently.

Like everyone, I need a job.

But, you know, I blame it on the storm.

Not on people, not on this district.

So that's kind of how I'm coping with it right now in Biloxi for Beyond Katrina.

I'm Gary Michel, MPB news.

We remind you that you'll be able to find important information and links to organizations featured on this program on our Beyond Katrina website at MPB online.org.

We also invite you to contribute photos, comments, story ideas, and blogs all through the website.

Well, reading rallies and interactive events are part of the National Education Association's read Across America program.

But as Patti Davis of MPB news reports this year, it included a reading relief tour to the Gulf Coast.

Hurricane Katrina destroyed 42 public school libraries in Mississippi.

And the state Department of Education estimates it will cost $32 million to replace the volumes of books, references, and media centers.

But with the help of this cat and his hat, help has arrived a million fold.

The National Education Association came to Wilkins Elementary in Jackson to help kick off the Mississippi leg of the Reading Relief Tour.

Replacing the books is symbolic of replacing everything else that those schools need.

Let's start with the books.

Let's get a book in the hand of a child.

Let's get an adult, a caring adult reading to that kid.

And that's what Read Across America is all about.

Read Across America stopped at 40 schools in the Gulf states, delivering thousands of books and $1 million in donations from NEA members.

We know that this effort is not going to, in and of itself, generate all this needed, but we will keep this before the public so that they will know that the need is not going away.

The NEA Foundation first book and the Heart of America Foundation will continue their relief efforts throughout the year.

For Beyond Katrina, I'm Patti Davis.

I do not want to.

Are we there yet?

Well, driving down highway 90 on the coast, you could once answer that question from the landmarks, not the landmarks.

You might think of signs, hotels and gas stations, but each tree, home building and bridge and everything else destroyed by Hurricane Katrina.

While Grayson explores the problem of having to navigate Mississippi roads without them, we had a rare Mississippi snowstorm a while back.

It was dusk, dark, and I was driving home from work, and it the oddest thing.

I was no more than a couple of miles from the house on a four lane road.

All of a sudden I wasn't sure where I was.

I mean, I knew the road I was on, but not exactly where on that road I'd gotten to.

All of my landmarks were covered by the snow.

Trees all looked like intersections.

All look the same.

I made it home all right, but for an instant, it sure was an odd sensation in the area.

Wiped out by Katrina.

It's been an odd sensation to people who've been accustomed to traveling there before the storm hit for months now.

Trees don't look as they did.

Streets don't.

Houses don't.

All the landmarks of the old days before are gone or had been drastically rearranged.

The beach is a stretch of plain this piers that all used to have their own individual identity have all been remodeled into the same ruin.

Perhaps the goals and the pelicans know where they are.

But if you used to navigate by the size, the shape and the color of them, you could be anywhere.

The loss of physical landmarks echoes the state of mind of many who are trying to navigate the ruins of their worlds left behind by the storm.

You know, on the banks of the Jordan River, just above Bay Saint Louis.

These folks are putting their steamer restaurant back together.

Hank and his partner, Chuck living House, are looking forward to a reopening of the Jordan River steamer soon.

They had been in business a year and a half before the storm set them back to zero.

Now they're finding their way back, but finding their way around is still a challenge.

You know, very hard to find out.

It's still that way.

If you go down anywhere in Bay Saint Louis and wave and coast to coast line, there's, I mean, you can't tell one spot from another.

When me and Chuck went down there, we couldn't find his family's old business.

I mean, where he grew up, that for 35 years.

I mean, a lot of it was just, you know, completely devastated going there.

You can't tell me.

The only thing left is a driveway.

And how do you know who that is?

Well, actually, I had to move to my house.

Got destroyed here.

I moved to about 50 miles away to Goshen, Mississippi, living close to my in-laws and everything else over there.

Yeah.

And, the only time I'm back in this area is to come here to work at the restaurant.

Ready?

And that's about it.

Yeah, but I've driven around town, stuff like that up.

This is hard to tell where everything used to be or kind of.

Yeah, that actually is really depressing.

I talked to a mail carrier in Waveland.

He told me not only was it hard to deliver the mail at first, but it still is.

There are vast areas where there are no houses, and even where they are, they're still areas where no street signs exist, except for those that have been hand-lettered and put up by just folks.

I guess that's a part of coming back to just folks doing what we used to wait for the government to do for us, or some agency or God, like putting up street signs or something else to show us the way.

I suppose the map in your mind is ever changing, where the two houses on the corner used to stand.

You know, those that were divided down the property line with this row of trees?

I guess it was those trees.

Maybe that was a block over.

Anyway, now on that corner, the most prominent landmark is the leaning fire hydrant.

And farther down into the neighborhood, even the piles of debris that used to be houses can become landmarks to steer by.

But even that landscape is constantly changing to.

It's the loss of bearings, that is, the constant underscoring of the loss of quaint streets and quaint houses, and has turned what used to be our definite world of knowing where we were always into a desert of maybes and don't know for sure.

And it's.

Coming up.

Spring has sprung on the coast.

It's not as green as it used to be, but Felder and Doctor Dirt have a cure for that.

You won't want to miss that story.

And some big ideas for major coastal reconstruction may come from an unlikely source.

For weeks, Brian Utley reports on how MSU students are participating in a project called Design Week are creating real life ideas for a new, improved Mississippi coastline.

Here in Mississippi, we've suffered the catastrophe called Katrina loss of life, loss of property, disrupting people's lives.

But we are now where we are.

So what are we going to do about it?

I would suggest we have the biggest opportunity that you're going to ever see in your entire life.

You're going to remember this for these students at Mississippi State University, they will remember Hurricane Katrina for something far different than the rest of us.

Instead of images of destruction and despair, they're dealing with images of renewal and hope.

All of this as part of a five day student charrette made possible by internationally renowned urban land planning firm Design Workshop.

After Katrina hit, they contacted us.

They wanted to look at it here.

They were initially scheduled to look at Iowa State this year.

So after Katrina, they called us and we said it was a great opportunity, one for an educational experience for our students, but also the opportunity to provide a great service for the communities in South Mississippi, led by Design workshop instructor Todd Johnson, the Design Week Land Planning Project challenged students to reinvent the Gulf Coast in a way that would champion its rich economic potential without sacrificing its diverse cultural identity.

The students focused their work on creating a land planning scale stretching 75 miles across the coastline and 24 miles inland.

By studying various base maps outlining the differing environments and levels of destruction, they were able to see which issues needed to be addressed.

The most.

This could mean anything from transportation problems to industrial or tourism losses, to perhaps a need to return a landscape back to its natural ecosystem.

Each tile has a different problem that they have to solve, and you have to get what the other tiles around you to make things work, because you can't have highway 90 moved in one tile, and then the next tile not have it because they won't.

They won't.

Me being from the coast, landscape architecture Major John Renfro has had the chance to redesign the community he grew up in.

He says.

More importantly, though, he's been able to share his personal connection to the tragedy with other team members and better help them understand what coastal residents are going through.

As students recognize how much work lies ahead in creating a new and improved Mississippi Gulf Coast, they also realize how much more there is to this design project than just trying to get a good grade.

After endless hours of detailed hand sketching, the finished land planning scale is truly something to behold.

24 tiles seamlessly connected into a 25 by 12ft work of art that spans the Gulf Coast from Waveland to Pascagoula.

We're saying remove that sand somehow, so that there is a large difference between the low and the high tide.

As the goals of each tile are carefully explained by team members.

A few big ideas in particular are already garnering a lot of attention, such as the plan to move highway 90 to the north, replacing the CSX railroad line along this new scenic parkway themed highway 90, a light rail commuter train network, is also being proposed that would connect all major locations on the coast.

Now, this will consist of two tracks.

One traffic will be a higher speed train that will originate in New Orleans, and will move all the way through the stops that you see here at the nodes.

And these nodes indicate, pedestrian walks a quarter mile radius, reinforcing the idea that their plans are under serious consideration.

A couple of very influential state leaders were on hand during Design Week.

Both the mayor of Gulfport and the executive director of the Mississippi Development Authority voiced their support for ideas they think may revolutionize the Gulf Coast.

The project.

It's that I understand that you folks have been focusing on.

Is that CSX right away?

I'm here to tell you you're doing stuff that's going to wind up in the real world.

I hope and I fully expect that, when they're my age, they have an opportunity to drive down that beach front with their children and say, you know, I, that was my idea and point out something that, would be a result of this process.

I fully expect that that'll be the case from Mississippi State University.

I'm Brian Utley reporting as an added no.

The student design proposals are currently being published into print form and will also be available soon on the internet at Mississippi renewal.com.

Old timers say that in spring, a young man's fancy turns to love.

And that's true in most cases.

But in this case, Felder and Doctor Dirt discover that springtime also means a young man's fancy turns to a love of gardening.

And.

Recently, Felder and I met up with Forest King and his family at Vancleave, Mississippi, in their backyard garden for his parents, Rick and Sandy King showed me around the place.

While forest talk with Felder about his commitment to gardening and the importance of volunteerism in his community in a forest.

I understand that you've been helping your mama plant all this stuff out of.

Yes, sir, I have this.

I mean, dig in the dirt and everything.

Yes, sir.

I have to dig the dirt and I tell it off.

And also on there for us.

Well, I notice that, you've got cabbages here, and this is, you know, March and all of that.

So how long are these been out here?

We actually planted them, after Katrina, about, three weeks.

You planted these right after Katrina.

And also things like, I don't know what you call this.

Calendula.

You can't eat these.

Can't, you know, so you got onions and lettuces and cabbages that you planted after Katrina and are saying it.

Yeah.

And just be helping your mother garden.

You've also been doing some volunteer stuff.

Now, I know you play in the symphony.

You almost 13.

You're almost in high school.

What kind of volunteer stuff did you did, volunteered at Saint Paul United Methodist Church.

Running food and water and just regular supplies to people who lost the house.

Well, the other people your age there.

Yes, there were about 6 or 7 other people my age there.

You've got all these things you can eat now.

Grew some from seed, some from plants.

And you do this yourself, right?

Yes.

Well, the solar cells that plant that, the pot that y'all we made over there a little while ago, Dirt's got some of your mama's special mixing that you want to go help planting some stuff?

Yes, sir.

All righty.

This is, forest, planter.

This is the planet.

That, forest, just got to, cutting up in spray painting and, my forest in here and help me to put some plants in.

Hey, dad.

Hey.

How are you doing, forest?

How are you?

Real good.

You know what this is doing, Nandita?

Yep.

There's a dwarf.

Nandini going to help me put this in.

We won't have to loosen this up a little bit.

Okay?

Okay.

Come on, help me listen this up a little bit more.

We got parsley here, some lettuce here.

This is March, and I know it's going to get hot here, so we're going to put in when we get hot peppers like Oriental Cayenne.

Yeah.

This looks fantastic.

You've got stuff for all seasons.

Yeah.

Including a red that goes with that tire that you painted red.

But look, you were in the symphony playing trombone.

Well, I brought you a surprise.

It's my old beat up trombone.

So it is disrespectful, but no garden is complete without an accessory.

And you can always plant something right up there.

Yes.

Listen, we're going to beat Katrina.

One flower pot at a time for beyond Katrina.

I'm Felder rushing and I'm doctor dirt.

Relocated.

Mississippians from around the country are coming to our Beyond Katrina website at MPB online.org.

Just trying to stay connected.

Help us keep them informed by visiting the website to find out how you can post photos and blogs on important happenings on the coast.

We also invite you to email your comments and story ideas to Beyond Katrina at MPB online.org.

Don't miss our next episode of Beyond Katrina.

When we come to you from Point Cadet in Biloxi, joined by all the mayors of our coastal cities, they'll give us progress reports on how their rebuilding efforts are coming.

And we also update the Beyond Katrina story every week on MPB radio.

Join Patty Davis for Beyond Katrina on MPB radio Tuesday morning from nine until ten.

We leave you tonight with eight year old Sophia Adira, a student at Coast Episcopal School in Long Beach who expresses her post-Katrina feelings in song with Scooter Gaines and Katie Savage of Mississippi Outdoors, providing the accompaniment and photos until next time, I'm John Johnson.

Thank you for joining us.

Hurricane Katrina came and swept away all the sand into the bay.

Well, I had a house.

It was pretty cold.

And now the whole thing is filled with rotting mud.

Hurricane Katrina came and swept away.

Oh, man.

Flashes in his head.

Well, I lost a of that brick and a sweater for my name and a bunch of other things that can't be replaced by fame.

Hurricane Katrina swept away all my possessions.

So the big well had a title.

His name was Start to Go.

Now it's in the new round.

But, you know, taking Katrina payments up to with other professions and to the debt.

Well, my momma said, Sabina, don't you cry.

I'm going to get you a puppy.

And momma buy her.

And the train came.

Swept away all my possessions into the bed.

Well, we're alive, and that's all that matters.

So there's a farmhouse on the far side.

Hurricane Katrina came and swept away, possessions in to, Okay.

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