(Haley Barbour speaks at Overby Center | The DM)
Former Mississippi governor Haley Barbour spoke about his leadership role during Hurricane Katrina and his book “America’s Great Storm” at the Overby Center Friday.
“It is not a political book at all,” Barbour said. “It is a book about the strong, resilient, self-reliant people of Mississippi. We bore the brunt of the worst national disaster in American history.”
The damage done by Katrina to the state of Mississippi was extensive. According to Barbour, the hurricane destroyed approximately 60,000 homes on the coast and thousands more inland. Unlike in Louisiana, where damage was mostly due to flooding, Mississippi was hit directly by extremely strong winds which caused entire buildings to be blown away.
“I will just tell you it was the most gut-wrenching, heart-rendering thing I’ve ever seen because it was utter obliteration,” Barbour said. “It looked like a nuclear weapon had gone off in the sound. There were places where nothing’s standing.”
Barbour said there was one major difference between how Mississippi and Louisiana handled the damage after Hurricane Katrina. Officials in Mississippi agreed that only one person needed to be in charge and that person should be the governor.
“We agreed before Katrina came on shore there should be a unified command,” Barbour said. “We had one team and that’s why we never lost civil control. It’s why we were able to do things together more effectively. They never agreed to that in Louisiana.”
It was just days after Katrina when Barbour began to realize he needed to deal with more than just the immediate issues like security or search and rescue missions.
“I got thinking long term,” Barbour said. “People have to believe that their communities are going to come back or they’re not ever going to come back. I can’t just be, and I can’t have our team just be focused on this week, next week. We have got to be thinking way down the road.”
Barbour spoke expansively of those who helped people on the coast of Mississippi get back on their feet after the hurricane. Around 954,000 volunteers from all over the country registered with various charities and churches helping with the clean-up. The Department of Defense also helped with the recovery effort.
“The Department of Defense is what saved us,” Barbour said. “The federal government sent us 1.7 million meals ready to eat, and we delivered them on helicopters and then on the ground.”
Barbour’s speech attracted students and Oxford community members, some of which had their own personal experiences dealing with Katrina.
“Our family was hit by Katrina,” audience member Wayne Gray said. “I thought he gave a very good overview of Katrina all the way from the government response to the individual response.”
