20 years later: Remembering the local impact of Hurricane Katrina

MERIDIAN, Miss. (WTOK) -20 years ago today -- the benchmark storm for the coast changed from Hurricane Camille to Hurricane Katrina as that deadly storm made landfall in Waveland, but Katrina’s catastrophic destruction stretched across South Mississippi as homes, businesses, landmarks, and communities were washed away.

Katrina’s surge pushed casino barges across Highway 90 and wiped out both the Biloxi Ocean Springs Bridge and the St. Louis Bay Bridge. Devastation was everywhere.

We saw a lot of damage in our viewing area, especially in the southern part of Lauderdale County and just about all of Clarke and Wayne counties.

WTOK went into 24/7 coverage of Katrina. Wade Phillips was the lead anchor at the time.

“It was some of the worst days in Meridian’s history as people tried to clean up. We were without power, gas, and the basic stuff that we needed. I remember seeing so many people who were hurt and devastated by it. I also remember how seeing people came together and helped one another, and how they helped clean up,” Wade Phillips, Former WTOK News Anchor.

Between Mississippi and Louisiana, 14 hundred people lost their lives. 20 years later, Katrina remains the costliest storm in U.S. history.

The storm moved through East Mississippi as a Category 1 hurricane.

He spoke with News 11 on Friday morning and reflected on how the team had prepared for the worst but were hoping for the best. He recalls that while many people remember the massive damage to the Mississippi Gulf Coast and New Orleans, the untold story is often how widespread the damage was inland for the Magnolia State and parts of Alabama.

“Katrina was a hurricane well up through Mississippi, and in my view, that’s the major untold story of Hurricane Katrina. You know, 80% of the attention was focused on New Orleans. And then the other 20% was focused on the Mississippi coast, which was hit catastrophically hard. No one ever talks about what happened inland. In southeast Mississippi, southwest Alabama. That’s the largest storm surge on record at the city of Mobile. It wasn’t Hurricane Frederick, it wasn’t Ivan. It was Katrina. Even though it made landfall way west. Uh. The impact to Alabama to Southeast Alabama, or Southwest Alabama, and Mississippi was massive.”

He then talks about how covering Katrina taught him lessons that he still uses today.

“The lessons I learned from Katrina have helped me years and years and years and probably always will. I learned to be much more in-user centric, and what I tell our people when we hire people and I’m trying to train them is it does not matter what you say, the only thing that matters is what they hear, and your body language, your facial expressions, your eye contact, the words you choose all have to be laser focused on that concept, that it doesn’t matter what we say. It matters what they hear, because if we’re speaking weather-eese, if we’re talking weather geek speak, we’ve lost them. They don’t understand how that’s what does that mean to me as a human being,” says Josh Johnson, Former WTOK Chief Meteorologist, current WSFA Chief Meteorologist.

Johnson also recalled the urgency for wtok staff to come together to help not only our community that was suffering, but the hundreds of displaced evacuees staying in the Queen City.

“The entire WTOK team just came together immediately because everyone understood the gravity of the situation. Everyone understood the human suffering that was ongoing, and we just rallied to try to be our brother’s keeper the best way that we could.”

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