Hello.

Welcome to a special Mississippi I'm Desare Frazier.

This year marks the 20th anniversary of Hurrican August 29th, 2005.

The hurricane's 125 mile per hou winds and 37ft storm surges barreled into Mississippi, decimating the coast as it raged The massive, slow moving hurrica at least 238 people dead in the and $125 billion in damages.

Former Governor Haley Barbour is with us to reflect on being face with leading the state through those traumatic days and forging Mississippi's recove from one of the nation's most deadly and destructive hurricanes.

Thank you for being with us.

We really appreciate your time.

Well, thank you, Desiree, and we'll get to the book.

You wrote a book, America's Grea leading through Hurricane Katrin But first, when you got wind, a storm was headed towards the Gulf that could threaten Mis What went through your mind?

Well, when the storm started gathering out in the Atlantic Oc I was just coming back from Japa where I'd been on a economic dev trip.

By the way, that resulted in Toy building a plant in Mississippi.

But I'd been made aware that there was a possibility that the storm in the Atlantic might come to Mississippi.

But it was very.

They.

There, there.

Of what could happen.

Went from South Carolina to Texa So I wasn't too worried about, I got back in, and the storm developed in such a wa when I first got back, it was out in the Atlantic.

By the time I really got settled it had crossed the tip of Florid just above Miami, and was in the Gulf of Mexico.

I was supposed to go to a governors meeting in Cancel that, with it by Wednesday or Thursday My staff, the head of the environmental pe the head of the disaster memo, Mississippi emergency Management Highway Patrol, National Guard, all were getting on alert that this storm might hit us, might be big.

But it was really Friday.

Or maybe even Saturday morning before we really understood how huge the storm was.

It spread from Texas to Florida.

When the when the the eye of the when the the tip of the storm came north, hit Mississippi and Louisiana.

The tail end of the storm was still in the Caribbean Sea.

Oh my goodness.

Below Cuba, below Yucatan.

It was turned out it was a storm like we'd never s It was a storm, as you mentioned, where the storm surge that hit W the the farther west community municipality in Mississippi to where the, cam in, literally right on the Pearl the boundary between Louisiana and Mississippi.

But the way hurricanes work in our part of the world is they turn counterclockwise, which means that the strongest w the hardest hit is in the northeast corner.

So from the river, the pearl, all the way over to Pascagoula, we had 20ft or more storm surge.

Trent Lott, House Senator Trent Lott in Pascagoula elevation, 19, was gone.

Nothing.

Nothing left.

And that was almost 80 miles from, in mobile.

They had ten feet of water in do mobile, 100 miles from the, So it was an unbelievably big st but it was also very destructive because the storm, the storm surge, which was getti by the by the winds and by the the power of the, sitting on the Gulf of Mexico.

Well, you were telling me that it was a category, one when it came out of the Atla and came into the Gulf of Mexico was a categor It was a category five when it turned north and came toward us.

It ran over some some barrier island off of the coast of Missi and further south, off to the off the coast of Louisiana.

And it knocked it back.

So the winds weren't as high, but the storm surge, it taught m category one through five only refers to the wind.

Does.

In our case, the storm surge was damaging than the winds, though As you mentioned, we had 238 fat a third of those were not, in the coastal counties.

People were we had a fatality in We had we had hurricane force winds at West Point north of Col It was a gigantic storm.

And and it the way that it just pushed forward from behind meant that when it came on shore that was just the beginning.

Okay.

So when you heard that a storm w that was powerful, this powerful towards Mississipp Is there manual?

What do you do?

Is there anything that prepares how to orchestrate and get things position?

How do you do that?

There he is.

Most Mississippians will remember that in 1969, we had a terrible hurricane called Camille.

Camille hit the Gulf Coast.

It was a category five storm when it came on shore I think at the time, it was the third category five storm in American history to have come But it was a very different hurricane from Katrina because it was small.

The eye of the storm was eight miles across.

The eye of Katrina was almost 10 miles across.

And so higher winds in Camille.

Lots, but lot of difference and worse differences, if that's the word in in Katrina.

But the answer to your question after 1969, every year the state did a preparation for the next hurricane because we knew there was one co And of course, we prepared for C And, I didn't know that when I ran for governor.

But when I became governor, we did found out, just like we've been doing it every year for for since 1970.

And so we were prepared in the broadest sense.

The storm was very different, and a lot of what we prepared fo we had to adjust.

But I will tell you, you are in a whole lot better sh if you've prepared and have to a than if you didn't prepare the nights before we able to sleep, we able to eat Where was your head?

How are you taking this in?

The night before was interesting in our lives bec we I had been very concerned.

Thursday and Friday that the evacuation order on the coas most people were not taken too s A lot of people had the attitude We did fine.

And Camille, it can't be bad as A lot of other people thought just.

We could ride it out.

They did not have any sense that it was a worse hurricane.

And Camille, until Saturday, Saturday afternoon, doctor Max M who's the head of the National W Service, is hurricane office.

Call me and said, governor, I tell you this, but this storm is the worst hurricane that has come ashore the United since I've been doing this.

And I said, well, you know, we've had Camille.

And he said, this storm is going to be a lot And Camille and he said, what can I do to he I said, I'll tell you what you c You can get the news media to st saying what you just said.

This storm is going to be worse than Camill because we can't we're not getting people to evac I mentioned earlier, Trent Lott, Trent Lott House.

The reason I knew was 19ft.

He wasn't going to evacuate.

And I call him on the phone.

I said, Trent, I know you're high, but if you're not going to how many other people will say, let's not, you know.

So finally the next day, they evacuated on Sunday.

That was close.

It was very close.

And Marcia, my wife, went down o to try to go on TV and the radio and talk about evacuation.

She came back Saturday night and said she wanted to go back S and and she wanted to go to Camp and thank the National Guard and Patrol and all the first responders who That's where we got them to, to And, and that was our headquarte until the storm came through.

She couldn't go to the coast and get down there because the, the the three winds at all were so b So they stayed at Camp Shelby an New Caption then they went down after the storm went through, took seven h to get from Camp Shelby, which is below Harrisburg.

Took seven hours because, U.S. 49 was towed.

We covered in debris and water.

And the highway Department, Department of Transportation had had trucks and bulldozers clearing out one lane so that the highway patrol and the National Guard could go down to where they were supposed to b So much of that was devastated.

Our headquarters was going to be the Mississippi Power plant.

They are on the Biloxi Bay.

Got ten feet of water or maybe more than ten feet of w And but, everything was crazy.

And so Marsha, after the storm went through.

Cell phones didn't work because all the towers were knoc Before we get to that part.

Talk about the contraflow.

That's where the traffic coming the coast was all headed up land inland.

How did that work?

And was that crucial and what you had to do?

Well, first of all, you should k the contraflow program is a multi-state program, and the FEMA Federal Emergency Management asked us to enter into a control flow agreement with Louisiana.

Okay.

Louisiana's got two interstate h that come out of New Orleans and go through Mississippi.

So if people were going to evacu from New Orleans, it was the great benefit to them If we turned Interstate 55 or Interstate 59 one way, which we did, we, we we started at 4:00 in the afternoon on Saturday and we went till 8:00 at night o Did you shut the road off or.

No, we just everything went nort And so if you had to go south you had to go down the non inter Okay.

We also did contraflow on 49 because we were trying to get pe we were trying to get people off the coast.

And so as people moved up inland they were looking for shelters, How did how did that work?

Where the shelters were filling as they moved and kept driving and driving and I don't know where people ended because there were so many comin from the coast.

We, you had people who were going in Mississ We had people who were going eas We had people that were going up to Meridian and some of them had family or churches or whatever.

After they got out of the first, third tier of counties.

And, but it was, you know, in New Orleans, they, they took the Superdome and made a shelter out of it.

Well, a lot of people of Mississ don't remember this, but we made out of the Coliseum here in Jack And, and it was, I don't know, 1500, 1600.

I was there were 1600 people.

And beyond that, we used the par for a staging area for the the c like Entergy and Mississippi Pow They have deals with other utilities around the So we had utility trucks coming for for days and days after the and some got there before the storm to come in and try to get the electricity b When the state of emergency came and you knew that you were going to have to deal with this.

Talk about emotionally how you held it together because you had a point person.

You had a governor and everybody's looking at you.

Okay, governor.

So somebody has got to be in cha And and the common sense person is the governor.

And I was blessed.

That was the second Republican g since reconstruction.

Most of the elected officials, even on the coast, were Democrat in the rural areas.

Most of the legislature were Dem but the Democratic elected offic said, we had a meeting down for River County Friday before t And the superintendent, schools and Harrison County got up.

And he said, Governor, somebody's got to be in charge.

We're Democrats, you're Republic But if you will just tell us that you will hear us out, not necessarily do what we say, but hear us out, then we'll accept that you're in And that was just such a blessin because most of the people who w in government don't work for the government.

County governments don't work for the governor.

City governors don't work for the governor.

School distric What about that?

None of them have to do what I s But they did because we had a great team and I was blessed with a great t But we made lots of lots and lots of decisions.

And when you make lots of decisi not all of them are going to be But we had the courage when a decision needed to be cha I changed it when something didn work out like we thought it was And I can think of a couple of e We went back and changed it and and said that we were changing i You know, a lot of politicians h a hard time admitting that they' But when you're dealing with the natural disaster in American his you going to be wrong.

Some a communication.

When did you lose communication with the Gulf Coast or any anywhere in the state for that matter?

We lost, on Monday, some owned Sunday, Sunday night, particularly in cell phones.

But by midday Monday, we didn't have any kind of commu with the coast except through the walkie talkie system of the military and the highway patrol.

All what happens is the towers get knocked down, and so there's no way to communicate.

One of my generals told me that like a Civil War general, that if he was in Gulfport and needed what was happening in Long Beach five miles away, he had to send somebody over the like a Civil War general.

He didn't have any way to commun And that went all over the coast People don't realize, how the people, except for the ones who were aff don't realize that all the power The Mississippi Power Company did not have a customer who could get power, not a custo Now, I know MPB tower was was up.

Fortunately, the only way to get information by radio out statewide, which, you know, was fortunate to be the case, but you could not really get a handle yet on what was going o in the midst of the storm.

Were you in a position where you could see what was hap Could you see the storm at all.

Could you see on the cameras or We could have a gross view, but the day of the storm, they will not let us fly in because the winds.

So Marshall went down.

Sunday, spent Monday night at Camp Shelby and then went down to the coast with the military and the highwa She was on the coast for hours because even though it took him seven hours to drive down there, they would not let us fly.

They wouldn't let us fly jets or helicopters or anything.

We cut a deal with the, Department of Transportation, th Department of Transportation tha The next morning, they would let me fly in a jet to the coast, flew into to Biloxi, Gulfport.

And where did when did I become literally understanding of this?

When I got up in the helicopter and flew from Gulfport Airport to the Pearl Ri back, and then all the way to the Alab and it looked like the hand of God had wiped away t It looked like a nuclear weapon had been shot off in the sound.

There were, utter devastation.

It turned out there were about 30,000 homes in the three coast counties, may that were uninhabitable.

We created a new verb slammed.

My house has been slammed.

There was nothing left but the s 20 something thousand houses.

There was nothing left but the slab upon which is said.

But when a this on the back of this, book, you and your wife is a picture of my wife and me where we, went down with President Bush three days after and we went to a neighborhood in and it totally slipped.

And you mentioned in your book there was a Secret Service agent with a tear in his eye.

Well, the Secret Service agent w was a kind of a mimic of of of my own exper We I flew in the helicopter over and and interestingly, Marcia had flown in the helicopt in the day because she was alrea there, and I had to fly down there, and I asked her to go with me.

She wouldn't go.

She said she won't see it again.

And that's how terrible it was.

You saw what had been neighborhoods that were flattened.

And then generally the further w they were, they were covered in silt or debris of some sort, sometime two feet, sometimes five feet, sometimes 25ft.

The railroad bed that runs east and west through the communities down the had become, a stopping point for that was 50ft tall.

And it was.

And they the highway I mean, the Secret Service, as you're talking about he he had he was with the presen But he present landed in Marsh and I was waiting for him.

And that Secret Service agent wa that walked us out to the plane.

And he said he couldn't wait to That he'd heard so much about it was just unbelievable.

We everybody got in the cars and we went over to to, to Bay Saint Louis and went down to that to the sch via Saint Stanislaus and stopped the motorcade happened.

That Secret Service agent opened the car door.

Marshall at my side.

Not on the president's side.

And he had tears rolling down hi He said, now I get it.

And that's how here's a pretty tough guy to be doing that job.

And, and it brought tears to his when I got off the airplane, off the helicopter three days on, on Tuesday, I had tears rolling down my chee And Burt Case came up to me.

We had lit one of the helicopter at Beatty.

We had three helicopters in the and we gave one of them to the p And Burt was in that one, and he got walked over to me and he said, what it when you flew over this, what did you think?

What was your biggest concern?

And I told him how much, how man we're going to find under that d And, Burt cried.

But it was, it was literally unbelievable.

You had a storm surge.

It went north of the interstate.

Down in Hancock County, Stennis Space Center, you know, which is quite a few m north of the beach, flooded.

It flooded right up to the to th And as and then the devastation that people had was just unbelie I mean, so many people lost everything they had.

And, Marshall.

Marshall went to the coast 70, the first 90 days after the stor And she thought of herself as the person who would find people who didn't know where to go to g and help them go get help.

And she took so many people and and so many stories and one thing that that stuck with me about what sh She tells the story of she had two highway patrolman wi and they were driving, and they were going through debr in their own, just above Bay Sai and come around a curve and there's a trailer.

It looked like a, she said it looked like somebody taking a beer can and just twist But out in the front yard with my own two little kids.

So she stopped and they had some Marsha found out the first day that the federal government's program doesn't have baby stuff, so she would every dime would send a plane down to the c We'd load up whatever space was left with bab So she's my baby formula that ra And so, They stopped and and the guy's t with his two little kids, and th start taking baby stuff out of the out of the back of th And the guy says to one of the t hey, that's enough for us.

We we we got enough.

And and the trooper said all we got pulling and the he started to get something else And the guy says, if you got ple there's a little old lady across who's a cutie.

And I don't think anybody's help And he said, well, we got plenty for her to.

We'll go take it over to her.

And they start taking something out of the truck for the for the And he says, well, if you all go if you go down the road a quarter of a there's a gravel road, it goes back to the right.

There's six houses down there, and I don't think anybody could have found them.

Go take it to them.

So here's a guy.

He knew, the lay of the land.

Ye Here's a guy that didn't have an before the storm.

Lost what little he had.

And he's saying, go help my neig Go help the little old lady across the road, as he should.

He and and I, I told Marsha that story gave me my faith that our people were going to be all right, that our people are going to do what's right to help each other to tell you another story about what gave me confidence.

The first time I went down there, I found out tha the Waveland Police Department, Waveland is the further west municipality on the on the coast Okay town, at that time a town of about 6500.

The Waveland Police Department that had a pla like I was talking about earlier Plan about what to do in case is The plan was made.

The police station ride out the When the storm calms down, 2626 then scatter and search and rescue, disaster assi Make sure, you know, people are not looting.

Well, they're in the police station, and all of a sudden the water's up to their wives.

And so they get up on the second The second floor floods.

In fact, at Waveland is where you had the 37ft storm If you count the waves on top, 3 they get out on the roof and get washed off, and there's some, some trees right around the police station that several of them hung on to Some of them got pushed all the way to the bay.

Wow.

At 8:00 that night, all 26 Wavel police officers were on duty.

To me, that was really, really instructive becau those people knew that their hou Now some of them, maybe all of them had evacuated, but, you know, in New Orleans they had hundreds of policemen, they were reporting on the TV and they were not.

All 26 policemen on duty.

And those two stories gave me a lot of faith in what we were going to do.

When you think about looking bac okay, we've gotten through the s I've seen the devastation.

What do I do now?

Wells encourage you to ask that, Tuesday, I went down.

And met with people.

Talk to people.

Senator Cochran, went down and he came back to Jackson.

Well, all this is fine.

You can't.

There's not much driv There's no gas wells, no gasolin because there's no electricity.

But there's also no driving because the roads are still cove Yeah.

You know, it was it.

Well, at any at any rate, I had comes to the mansion and says to me, you're going to know more about what needs to be done than we in Washington want to do.

But you got to tell us what to d And anything you tell me to do, I will try to get done.

And Trent took the same attitude and thank God George Bush took the same attitu that, because as we went through, I think I mentioned earlier there were changes that had to b and the federal disaster assista because there wasn't a provision for that kind of damage, just take this one inch one example, the Stafford Act.

That's what the federal disaster assistance law is called.

A Stafford Act had no provision for assistance for permanent hou They had assistance for temporar you know, put you up at a motel, put you up in of whatever.

But there was no provision for permanent housing.

We ended up building 57,000 hous that were uninhabitable.

We replaced them or built them back 57,000.

That wasn't.

The federal government wouldn't for that under the old law.

But people saw what happened to us in Louisiana and they changed the law so that it could do what what needed to be done could be You had relationships because you worked in, in President Ronald Reagan's administration political directo And then you were president of the Republican National Commi Those relationships, were they b and trying to get what you need done.

Plus, George W Bush is president gotten to be very good friends w President Bush.

Governor Bush of Florida, who was a tremendous help to us during this, but also having been chairman, having been chairman of the part I knew and maybe more importantl almost all of the Republicans in Congress knew me.

And, and, and I will say that most of them had confidence that I would do what needed to b But, it wasn't just the Republicans that helped.

I'll never forget, November 1st, after the storm, I went to the to Washington to p our final plan to the president and to the two houses of Congres And that was the president first of course.

Thought we got a very good respo Went to, and this was a laid out plan that we had begun developing that day, that Senator Cochran came to see two days after the storm.

Three things were our main prior we laid out how we would how we would meet those prioriti And the white House didn't say absolutely yes to eve but made it plain that they were to do everything they could.

I went over to the house, side of the of the Capitol, to see the speaker of the House.

And when I got off the elevator, Barney Frank was there.

Barney Frank, one of the most of we have, right far from Massachu one of the most liberal members of Congress.

And he and I had been on a TV sh one time together.

You know, one of those back and forth TV shows.

And he heard his voice.

Haley, Haley and I looked over and there's Barney Frank, and he said, he called me over.

So I went over there.

He said, I heard Mississippi's g of what y'all want us to do for And I said, yes, sir.

If, I've just come from present to the white House and I'm going to see the speaker now, and Barney Frank says to me if you'll give me a copy of your I will send it to every Democrat member of the and say, This is Mississippi's p I'm going to vote for it.

And I wish you would do.

We didn't lose one Democrat vote because people like Barney Frank or whether they're liberals are conservatives or whatever, they had seen the devastation they had seen.

That is the worst natural disast in American history.

And their constituents wanted them to help.

You know, they didn't.

It wasn't just them.

They were getting told at home, what are y'all doing?

What are y'all doing?

And the federal government was c a lot, particularly early on.

FEMA, FEMA got hit hard early on And their their initial system for moving help to us failed.

It did and it just failed.

But look, the federal government did so much more than they get c and a whole lot more right and w There are a lot of people you me People were concerned and wanted to know what was bein There are a lot of volunteers, t According to your book that came to Mississippi, nearly a million, a million, nearly a million, 960 You counted.

Well, I'll tell you why.

When somebody would come down from Massachusetts, usually they would come down as a church group or some organization group, or maybe they had family or had, but almost all of them register with somebody.

They stayed at the Presbyterian or they stayed at the, you know, some charity or whatev 960,000 is the number names that were captu by the groups that helped them get a place to stay, get something to work on.

And that was in five years.

And what's unbelievable to me is of them came the first year.

That 360,000 more came in the next four years.

I mean, people were people were I can remember there was a church in California that would send two busloads a y for five years, same church.

And what were they doing helping with rehab, building, pr first thing first.

And most people don't think abou is you cannot start rebuilding until you clean up, 17 months we were we removed something lik million tons of debris.

Wow.

And again, you tell about keepin That's what the federal governme reported, because when you're cleaning up, you have to report to them because they understand you can't start rebuilding.

Do you clean up so they're going try to make sure you you underst And there are companies that that's all we do, that they bring in crews and cle And then you can start rebuildin And when you talk about, cleaning up money, how much money did it cost for i to get it cleaned up?

Well, the federal government gave us $24.5 billion.

That's before you ever talk about insur I believe the insurance companie that they thought it was a coupl billion dollars.

I think you said 120 billion.

And that may my figure may not be been a long time, but but all in all, the the clean up was in the way, over $100 million and maybe way over $200,000,000 And he had to restore power, gas and I'm sure gas lines got tore up all that kind Yeah.

I'll never forget, president called me four days after the storm, three days after the storm, and said, do you know where Collins, Missi So, Mr. President, you've been governor.

Of course.

And I know where every town of M is.

Why?

He said there are two pipelines that come out of Texas, one square and one type of fuel.

One's carrying another type of f They cross at Collins, and the electricity is off at Co And we're about to have a okay, they're about to have to shut do because they don't have power.

And so I said, Mr. President, let me have a little I called him back that afternoon I talked to Anthony, to Patsy, who was the head of massive Powe He said, hey, by that's not in our service area.

And I said, what do you what do you need something.

Is there anything you can do abo to get it fixed?

And he said, I won't say exactly what he said Heck, we'll just go do it.

And I'm going to tell the other which was a rural electric Power association, that we'll take car And they got it cleaned up by the next morning, the cleaned up back operating.

And, that could have been one of the biggest stores in the that this is what the pipelines that take fuel from Atlanta to W Wow.

And, disrupting that would have some larger implications to Patsy.

Both had both the big utilities were grea But to Patsy, had no customers who could take at the end of the storm.

He got all he got, every customer who could take po And when you say couldn't take p why couldn't they?

The lines were lines were down o for for a lot of those customers they couldn't take power because they didn't have any hom There wasn't anything left or business left, but they were So lines down and that was their only problem.

So they went in and to Patsy said as a date that they were going to get fini The storm was August 29th, Septe because of the importance of September 11th in everybody's That he knew that that would be and he tells the story he used to tell story he did now he made the announcement on tele that every person, every customer who could take power would have power by Septem And in a warehouse where they were feeding all the guys who worked on the l they got them clapped.

The guys are going to have to do How long were folks, on the whol without utilities in the state?

If you had to estimate, because I'm sure some came onlin at some point, some at other.

And, I think there are.

There were people who were start to get back to online, within a week or so.

But remember, about 20% of the people couldn't take electricity because their home was destroyed the utilities were great.

And I will tell you something el The bush was very good, but he did this for me.

The typical deal from a disaster was the investor owned utilities could only get 20% of what they The rural electrification associ and the municipally owned, the ones that were not for profi They gave them 100%.

For the first time ever.

They gave both Mississippi, Mississippi Power and Entergy.

And I think at most they gave them all 100% instead of 20%, because it was just so clear that, you they asked for.

Exactly.

But, I can't remember exactly ho those two utilities spent, but it was gargantuan.

They I don't know if they could borrowed enough money.

In the meantime, are you communicating with legis How do they fit into this?

And what happened with that?

Well, we have a special session of the legislature within 30 days.

And kind of got their ideas about our program.

But we also, I think the biggest thing that w is that we we changed the casino when we passed casinos in 1991, the casino had to float the floor.

The casino had to float either on the Mississippi River or on the Gulf of Mexico.

Okay.

People were not going to lend casinos money to build back on the Gulf of Mex They had they had learned that l from casinos that were sitting o in the middle of the highway, si knock over a church and, So the legislature, I asked them to allow casinos to come on board 800ft and, there may have been some issue about 500ft versus 800ft.

But the main thing is we would t the casinos could come up out of the water.

And what what's the benefit of t That the next hurricane wouldn't blow the casinos all over the pl like it like like this one did.

Well.

And the other benefit is no bank was going to lend them money to Long term care facilities and ho Did you have to do anything for they all their businesses in dis The patients first of all, we ma get their patients out before the storm got there.

And I think one of the big probl Louisiana had was that they had a lot of fatalities in nursing homes.

all all of the coast medical, pharmaceutical, doctors offices, they were all decimated.

We had a good evacuation of thos but it took it took a while to build them ba And, one of the great things about Am I got a call from a guy to a pharmaceutical company that I had represented when I was a law lobbyist, and he said that he had a group of pharmaceutical that were willing to give pharmaceuticals.

If I could assure them that the pharmaceuticals would get us by people who got hurt by the st And then this was the catch, that we would store the pharmaceuticals and have a total security, because they were afraid somebod that there were $25 million, which is about what they gave us, $25 million of pharmaceuticals, of drugs, that they would try to break in and get it.

So we had a, we had a warehouse in, I can't remember it was in McGee or Mendenhall, and I surrounded it with National Guard and Highway and took them probably two months for all that to get used.

But it was all free.

I mean, they it was a contributi by these these companies is, you America's the most generous coun in the history of the world.

And sometimes it takes something like Katrina to remind you of how generous Americans are, not only with their money, but as you were talking about ea about those 960,000 people with their time, you know, in ti something they can't get back.

My, my mother used to say crises in catastrophe do not create character.

They reveal character.

The character was already there.

And that's what I was reminded of over and over by Katrina.

That how many people?

It brought out the best in them.

I can't tell you.

Desiree.

Desiree.

How many times I had volunteers or people who were se by their state government.

We had 48 states that sent something, and they would stop me and say, you know, governor, I feel like I'm getting more out than I'm good than I'm doing for the people that I came here It just makes me feel better abo And I will note, because I want to close this out I could talk to you for another Because this was just such a monumental situation and a profound experience that you had to go through.

But one person in your book said that you will go down in hi as the gold standard for handling a disaster.

How does that make you feel?

Well.

I'm flattered, but the truth is, a whole lot of people made this Zell Miller used to be governor of Georgia.

If he's a Democrat, but he's a friend of mine.

And, Zell, you should say if you drive down a highway and a turtle sitting on top of a fen you know, he didn't get there by Well, that's the way I feel abou People give me the credit, but there's so many people who h 960,000 volunteers, the 48 states that give you a great example of Bob Riley was governor of Alabam Mobile has got ten feet of water in downtown, mobile and he sends two companies of Al National Guard, military police to Mississippi because he said he thought I made him worse.

Isn't that something that just it's, it and it's just over and over a People found ways to help, and they they, They they didn't get they didn't walk something in re because they felt in their own hearts like they we getting something in return.

I better about himself.

Governor Haley Barbour, I want to thank y Thank you Desare Im Desare Frazier.

Thank you for joining us.