Katrina – One Year Later

The storm waters from Hurricane Katrina hadn't fully receded before Alabama started to prepare for the next emergency. While sodden homes were being razed, while evacuees from New Orleans and Mississippi headed inland, state officials learned a lot about the Heart of Dixie and how it reacted when an unimaginable disaster struck.

They learned the people of Alabama would step forward and give what they had, work when they could, to help strangers who'd lost everything along the Gulf Coast.

They learned the state needed — and would demand — a quicker reaction from the federal government.

For the first time, they realized they needed an inventory of what resources for housing, food, transportation and health care were available in Alabama, as well as a better way to get people in need in touch with communities of plenty.

From Baldwin County and Mobile, all the way up through Montgomery to Anniston, notes were made on what went wrong — and what worked well.

A year after Katrina's assault, The Star today begins a three-day series on the storm, its costs, its lessons and the people who survived it and came to call Northeast Alabama home.

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