The city had made 100 years and we had just celebrated that the first week of August.
Unbeknowing what was coming the 29th of August that would change the face of our city.
August 29th, 2005, obviously it was an extremely tough day for all of us. Much was lost but
in the past decade, much has been gained.
August 29th was ten years ago, was a very devastating day, one of the darkest days in
the history of Long Beach. But at the same time, a lot of good came from that.
August 29th, 2005 was something I don't care to re-live. I know it may happen again, but
certainly my deepest wish, hope and prayers that we don't have to go through something like
that all over again.
Soon after Hurricane Katrina left its mark on the Mississippi coast on August 29th, 2005,
officials of the city of Long Beach carved paths south of the town's railroad tracks
to see first-hand the very worst of the damage.
Richard Bennett was an alderman at the city of Long Beach when Katrina came ashore and
says he'll never forget what he witnessed in the hours following the storm.
What I saw until I got up to the tracks was bad, but nowhere near what I saw when I passed
those tracks. Between the railroad tracks and Highway 90, everything was gone. I really questioned
myself, how can we recover, and what can we do? We lost the tax base, we lost everything.
And not only on top of the structures that we lost, we had lost lives in this storm.
August 2005 was a month of epic highs and lows for Long Beach. Having celebrated 100
years as a city in early August, only to face the city's worst natural disaster just weeks
later.
Mayor Billy Skellie remembers venturing out to the storm-ravaged parts of the city.
I climbed up on a pile of debris probably about 15 feet high, south here on Jeff Davis.
As I looked across all that, I said you know, possibly we can just build back better, because
it's a clean slate.
The Gulf Park campus of The University of Southern Mississippi is the state's only beach-front
campus, located on the heavily-damaged Highway 90 corridor in Long Beach. Coming back onto
the Gulf Park campus after the storm, and seeing the damage was difficult for university
staff.
It was complete and utter devastation. You hear a lot of people talk about it was a war
zone, well I never been in a war zone personally, but I can imagine, it was something quite
similar because you would look for acres and acres and it would be complete devastation.
Authorities spent the next hours immersed in full-scale rescue and recovery efforts.
Soon volunteers arrived from both nearby towns in Mississippi and from states coast to coast
across the United States.
There was such a sense of community. It didn't matter where you were from or who you were,
people came in and just helped you out, did anything they could for you, didn't ask for
anything in return, and it was just an incredible coming together of human spirit.
They really made a difference, I think any community I've talked to across the coast
will talk about the volunteers, always the volunteers.
Volunteer support was critical to coast families committed to returning and rebuilding. Longtime
resident Tya Brooks followed evacuation warnings and sought refuge north of the coast. But
days later, chose to come home and rebuild.
I grew up on the coast, all of my family is here. I really had no desire to leave and
I enjoyed working at the university. I've been here almost two decades and to just up
and leave would have been a big deal. So it was better for us to just stay here and I
think a lot of people felt the same way. It was just too much invested just to walk away
from it.
The people here are resilient, there's no doubt about that. If anything that comes out
of a storm is good, it's how it brings the people together. We're still in recovery but
we've come a long ways. We really have.
Representative Bennett says the community has come a long way together, in part because
of residents and businesses choosing to return to Long Beach, with their families and the
strong support of The University of Southern Mississippi.
When people look at coming to the coast for industry, business or locating down here,
they look at the opportunities for education. The University of Southern Mississippi is
a big piece of that puzzle.
It's been a part of us. Whether it was them doing business with our local merchants back
in the 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s, to the university now, with the spin-off they have with students
in our community and the availability of higher education right here.
More than two hundred and seventy thousand square feet of classroom and office space
was destroyed by storm surge at the Gulf Park campus of The University of Southern Mississippi.
Now 10 years later, enrollment at the Gulf Park campus is higher than any year
pre-Katrina, with more than 600 course offerings. From undergraduate and master's courses all
the way up to PhD programs. More than a dozen buildings have been built or reconstructed
during the past decade, and upcoming projects include a new college of business, college
of health two-story state-of-the-art facility, as well as a new beach-front entrance to the
campus. The University of Southern Mississippi together with the city of Long Beach and all
of south Mississippi are soaring ahead, ten years after Katrina.