GULFPORT, Miss.

Hurricane Camille, a Category 5 storm, hit the Mississippi Gulf Coast Aug. 17,1969. It delivered a 22-foot storm surge, killed 256 people and left $1.4 billion in damage.

Hurricane Katrina, a Category 3 storm, hit the same spot Aug. 29, 2005. It had a 30-foot storm surge, killed more than 1,800, and damage estimates now flirt with $100 million.

What happened at landfall and immediately afterward, however, really isn't known. A separate event-the levee breach in New Orleans and the resulting chaos-took up most of the media oxygen. Recriminations and political posturing were the order of the day.

Hurricane Katrina's real destruction and the storm's path spared much of Louisiana. But Katrina hit Mississippi head-on and a visit there even today is reminiscent of war footage from Hiroshima in 1945.

Today, the most thriving business along the coast is construction. Throw a rock; hit a contractor. It's perhaps a sign of the area's resilience.

During the storm, to little fanfare, the National Guard was resilient as well. The storm was worse than anyone imagined, and it provided many hurdles. But it also taught the Guard some lessons for next time. Guard officials, working with other state and federal agencies know it could happen anytime.

The Storm

The Air National Guard Combat Training Center in Gulfport, Miss., had a very informal change of command ceremony Aug. 29, 2005, one day before the storm hit.

While new to the actual command, Col. Russell Madderra had spent 16 years of his 33-year career at the base. The training center is located on one end of the Gulfport International Airport about two air miles from the coast.

"We knew it was going to be bad; we just didn't know it was going to be this bad, Colonel Maddeira says. "Once the winds really got up there 120, 125 miles an hour, it was just too dangerous to be back outside, except for the occasional trip I made, like an idiot."

The brick building he was in began to sway as the winds increased. A hangar door blew off and was never found. The first building destroyed was one of two that had survived Camille's 200 mph winds 36 years before.

"Once we were here, once that had happened, there was no way possible we could go out into that after anybody," he says, and it was like that for six hours. "That afternoon when the winds got back below about 120 miles an hour... we went out and tried to do some recon."

The Biloxi shoreline has the Gulf on one side and the bay behind it; the 30-foot surge hit from more than one side.

"We had a boat sitting on the south end of the runway," Colonel Madderra says. "The water had to have gotten at least 18 feet deep in order for the boat to get over the chain-link security fence to float up."

Such a powerful storm and its arrival at high tide, moved the coastline inland, and inundated everything.

There was some warning, however. Colonel Madderra says they had a few hours notice when the storm turned north. The east edge of the eye wall traveled right up Highway 49, which runs north from the coast, about a mile east of the airport.

Maj. Gen. Harold A. Cross, Mississippi adjutant general, says one of the biggest problems was the predictability of the hurricane.

"Once they predicted the eye was going to come along [to the west] ... the people in Pascagoula were almost 80 miles away from that, so they probably breathed a sigh of relief," he says. "And as you know, the storm surge and that counterclockwise flow did almost as much devastation in Pascagoula."

He says having seen Camille come across, the storm appeared to be of lesser magnitude. But the effects were worse.

"The agitation of that storm surge it what devastated it, it made it look like a nuclear weapon had gone off down there, the entire length of the Mississippi Gulf Coast," General Cross says.

The Aftermath

"Aftermath" is a relative term, when referring to the Guard's responsibilities. Although suggesting a reaction once the storm passed, it didn't happen that way in Mississippi or Alabama.

Maj. Gen. Mark Bowen, Alabama adjutant general was already ready moving.

"What we try to do in Alabama [is] pre-position," he says.

With the storm providing a glancing blow to Alabama, he says he knew Mississippi would need some help. General Cross called General Bowen, asked for engineers and military police, and he got them. The paperwork, General Bowen says, would come later.

"We put about 1,500 soldiers in to Mississippi very quickly," General Bowen says.

He then told Lt. Gen. H Steven Blum, National Guard Bureau chief, that he could provide a self-sustaining force and would just go as far west as possible.

"We had them in the state in less than 24 hours," he says, "[but] we can do better."

In the meantime, sad realities struck Colonel Madderra back in Mississippi.

First, he could not believe the destruction; but worse, he had no idea so many families ignored the evacuation recommendation.

While the winds were churning, still at hurricane strength, it calmed down enough to get to work on their action plan, and they worked fast.

"We have four hours to clean the runway [and] have it ready for operations [in our disaster plan]," he says. "Thanks to all that heavy wind and a lot of quick, hard work, we had it open in 45 minutes. We were able to receive, by air... an hour after landfall."

They soon had five C-5 aircraft on the ground at one time, full of Meals Ready to Eat-with just nine people to unload them.

For three days, the airport launched one sortie per minute, whether it be rescue of local personnel or distribution of food and water.

"We're flying stuff, whatever it is, Huggies, diapers, I mean, you name it, we flew it," he says. "And out of frustration there were shots fired at the helicopters-we all know about that [but] if it had something to do with helping the citizens, we did it."

The Lessons

"The problem with Katrina, is something this magnitude, [you have to] throw the book back in the drawer," Colonel Madderra says. "[Planning provides] a good starting point, but there is no plan man can make that will prepare you for this."

Fortunately, Mississippi didn't have the law enforcement problems, which Guardsmen had to respond to in New Orleans, some as recently as this summer.

The biggest impact was the unnecessary loss of life-even with such a storm. All but one death-a Guardsman affecting a rescue, could have been prevented had the people evacuated, according to General Cross.

While some deaths were from structural failure, most were from drowning-many from people climbing into attics with no escape route, who died when the water go too high. Others washed away in the surge.

"We saw some very sad cases down there, people who had lost children, had their children laid out there in their front yard or on the kitchen table that, you know, will have to live the rest of their lives with the terrible guilt of the fact they didn't evacuate their children," General Cross says.

From a hurricane response standpoint, preparation can only take you so far, particularly if the event outweighs any reasonable response plan.

In the very early hours, General Bowen's Alabama troops had access via Interstate 10, which runs east and west, and was able to get into the state quickly; it took General Cross six hours to drive the typical two-hour ride from Jackson. The Guard had to cut its way through the debris crossing the road all the way down.

This was actually pan of a plan that works. It just takes events like Katrina to force adjustments to the plan.

"What we do with our task forces, we're going to move south for the hurricane," General Bowen says. "If the hurricane hits Mobile, we're there; if it hits Mississippi, all we have to do is a right turn on I-10; [and] a left turn on I-10 if it goes to Pensacola [or] Panama City [Fk]."

After General Cross' experience of driving dirough the debris field, he's going to use the same approach. In fact, he said if they would have gone around the storm like Alabama, they might have arrived at the scene earlier But either way, little could be done until the second day.

General Bowen insists the system is not broken, despite die complaints that made headlines in the weeks after the storm.

Colonel Madderra agrees.

For example, it's great to have a plan to meet at point A to then go to point B. But if point A doesn't exist after the disaster, there's Htde you can do but adapt to the current situation.

The tilings that worked were the things already arranged, such as the [Emergency Management Assistance Compacts] agreements for other states to help.

General Bowen says some of the perennial problems are still the most crucial. Particularly in states without a large influx of cash and big tax base.

"I've been trying to sell [officials] regularly, [to] put us in [federal] Title 32 about diree days out," he says. "That way it doesn't bankrupt the state."

Another issue is that state active duty does not provide survivor benefits in Alabama, but Title 32 resolves that situation.

Overall, Katrina increased awareness for the Guard, but not great response changes.

They've increased the number of meetings with FEMA and continue addressing problems such as communication among the agencies, which was definitely a problem after Katrina. But that's often a matter of the federal government stepping to the plate to pay for equipment.

Other pre-hurricane changes could possibly help, but reaction plans should stay rather similar.

"We need to find, probably in my opinion, a different way to categorize hurricanes," General Cross says, since the current system measures the storm by the wind velocity at the eye wall. "You really need to measure a hurricane threatwise," and include variable such as tide levels, water potential and even storm speed.

The Guard, in many respects, saved itself, and it was able to help more.

"The back channel relationships will save you when the bureaucracy doesn't," Colonel Madderra says. "Everybody down here now-whether you're military or not-everybody understands, the way we survive this is by pulling together."

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