Do you remember where you were Monday, August 29, 2005? It was the day that changed the lives of thousands of people across the Mississippi Gulf Coast region.
Katrina was named a tropical storm on August 24 before being upgraded to hurricane status on August 25, Category 1. Only three days later it was upgraded to Cat 5 and made landfall as a Cat 3. Sounds like a significant decline but it was not. She made initial landfall in the early morning hours in Southeast Louisiana before a second landfall over Hancock County, Mississippi, according to www.weather.gov. The destruction was wide and deep inland as Simpson County took a direct hit of gale force winds.
Former mayor Jimmy Clyde was serving his third term as city leader when Katrina came through Magee. “You never anticipate anything of that magnitude. It came during the day, which was a blessing because so many times those things come at night. You hear it’s coming from the coast and it’s not good; it’s not good at all. The farther inland it comes you think, ‘Maybe it’s going to dissipate and it’s not going to be bad.’ We were kind of the last people it was really bad for and it was really bad here!”
Clyde continued, “Who would have thought something like that hurricane would come this far inland? Who would have thought the levee system in New Orleans would have failed? Who would have ever thought you would have a pandemic or prepare for a pandemic?”
Electricity was out; trees were down everywhere. But there was water in Magee; it never went off. But while Magee proper had water, many rural areas did not. The city became a drop off point for several distributions of bottled water.
In addition to the power outages throughout the county, there was also the lack of gasoline. Residents experienced long lines and limits to how much fuel could be purchased.
“The first thing you’re concerned about is loss of life. Is everybody okay? Then you can’t really do anything because it’s so bad out there. You let it settle and then you go, but you still can’t get to people. It’s a numbing effect. You’re concerned about your family; you’re concerned about your community.”
Clyde says he lived at City Hall and his wife Debbie lived at First Baptist Church for about two weeks while the church was set up as a shelter for those escaping the coast. It was all hands on deck for Magee including the police department, fire department, city department heads and employees to help get Magee back up and going. Damage assessments, cleaning debris and restoring services were equal priorities in returning Magee to a modicum of normalcy.
“Everybody was on edge. You’re hot; you’re tired; you’re hungry. That’s a thing that I remember. People were hungry. We had people from New Mexico who served food behind the church for weeks and they served anybody who wanted to eat,” Clyde said.
Clyde remembers attending a meeting on the Gulf Coast and seeing the devastation to Waveland and Bay St. Louis. He heard horrific stories of destruction and death. “There was nothing there; numbers where houses used to be. At some point you say, ‘Lord just get us back to normalcy. Let us be able to pick up the garbage. At that point you worry about people breaking into homes. You really appreciate getting back to normalcy. It was some trying, trying times.
“What you learned through this was the resilience of people, the way people worked together,” Clyde said. “We had church in the street that week at First Baptist Church. You do what you know to do. People come together. Churches come together, no matter what denomination. Everybody— black, white, Methodists, Baptists, Catholics; everybody came together. That’s what’s so great about Magee. It’s a special place. When something like that happens they answer the bell. And they did,” Clyde explained.
The city provided Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner along with Christmas gifts to the city employees of Bay St. Louis that year.
Clyde said if there was a good part to Katrina it was the grant money available after the storm. During Katrina there was a shared generator between half of city hall and the city jail. Now nearly all city buildings are equipped with commercial generators, and there are also generators on the sewer pumps if the power fails.
“It’s hard to believe it’s been 20 years but the recovery was a long time. In a perfect world you pray that’ll never happen again.”
