The hurricane's eye crossed over the Pearl River between Louisiana and Mississippi with 120 mph winds and a storm surge nearing 30 feet, hitting the upper-right quadrant hardest. The entire 70-mile Mississippi shoreline experienced three-story-high surge, with coastal flooding reaching up to 10 miles inland and hurricane-force winds extending into north Mississippi. The storm killed 238 people in Mississippi and nearly 1,400 overall. About 60,000 structures were uninhabitable and over 25,000 were destroyed, many reduced to concrete slabs. Bridges and roads were severely damaged or washed away, impeding immediate response and recovery.
"The eye came in right there over the Pearl River, which is the boundary between Louisiana and Mississippi," he says. It was packing winds of 120 miles an hour and a storm surge nearing 30 feet. "The most powerful winds, and storm surge are in the upper right-hand corner. And that hit us," Barbour recalls. Barbour is walking through a new exhibit at the state-funded Two Mississippi Museums in Jackson.
While much of the focus marking 20 years since Hurricane Katrina is on New Orleans, where federal levees failed and flooded the city, the historic storm also decimated the Mississippi Gulf Coast. The state's entire 70-mile shoreline was inundated with Katrina's three-story-high storm surge. It knocked out bridges, buckled roads, and washed away homes and businesses. The storm killed 238 people in Mississippi and nearly 1,400 overall. "It looked like the hand of God had wiped away the coast," Barbour recalls.
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