BAY ST. LOUIS – One of the areas hit hard by Hurricane Katrina was Bay St. Louis.
Emergency leaders say they did everything they could to get ready for Hurricane Katrina, but nothing could prepare them for the wrath she brought to the area.
"When the National Weather Service calls and tells you that you're going to be ground zero...that's something that sticks in your head,” Brian Adam, Hancock Emergency Management Director, said.
It’s the memories of Hurricane Katrina and the days that followed Adam will remember for the rest of his life.
“We might've had a Category 3 storm, but we had Cat 5 storm surge,” Adam said.
Katrina devastated the Mississippi Gulf Coast with 135 mile per hour winds and up to 30-foot storm surges, killing 238 people.
Adam and his small team of workers and volunteers worked around the clock. At one point they were so worried they wouldn’t survive, they put marks on their arms identifying who they were.
After the storm, they place the numbers on an American flag in memory of what happened.
“There wasn't but two of us that did not lose their homes. And rest of them, even though they lost their homes, they still stayed and worked,” Adam said.
Brice Philips also helped saved lives that day. He is the station manager at the amateur radio station WQRZ-FM.
When Katrina was barreling down on Hancock County, Philips’ voice was the only form of communication coming from the area.
“That's how we ran during the storm, was by taking car batteries out of cars that were flooded outside and continue to broadcast,” Philips said.
“If it would've have been for the amateur radio, that he has and that he very well versed in..we wouldn't have had contact with anybody,” Adam said.
It was the quick-thinking, sacrifice, and dedication from them, along with dozens of others that helped so many people during one of the worst natural disasters in our history.
"Continues to remind people that we do have this element always, that we have to live 6 months out of the year on coastal communities and to make sure we're prepared for hurricanes,” Philips said.
Adam says the memories will never go away, but he is happy to see how far the area has come since that day.
Caresse Jackman has been reached at cjackman@wwltv.com.