Sometimes all hell does break loose, and it can do so literally right in your own front yard. That was my experience on August 29, 2005, when Hurricane Katrina came ashore and plowed through Mississippi, inflicting damage on a scale that’s difficult for most people to comprehend (including me, and I saw a lot of it up close).

I do not live on the coast where Katrina first made landfall, so I was spared the worst of the storm. I live 200 miles inland in a residential neighborhood. What’s more, I was on the west side - the “good side” - of the eye, so what we got wasn’t as bad as what other towns on the east side of the eye got.

The power went off about 2:00 in the afternoon that Monday. For the next six hours we were wound pretty tight - looking out the windows at the ancient oaks and giant pines swaying in the high winds, wondering if any of them were coming down, and whether they would come down on top of us, and on our 4-year-old.

Continued...