Joe Comer, ham radio volunteer

A post on the "Daily Brief" -- Katrina was devastating, but the Gulf coast will rise again:

Destruction in the Gulfport - Biloxi area was pretty bad, but the speed with which recovery is going is really impressive. Power companies from all over the country are working to get power back on, and other people, such as law enforcement folks are there from nearly everywhere. I met a group of state troopers from Indiana at Hattiesburg, even before I got to Gulfport. They were on their way down. There were groups of Florida state troopers there. Sonar guy asked me in a comment if there were Naval Reservists there. In fact, there were. On Thursday, on a trip to the Biloxi center, I met up with a whole group of Naval reservists, unloading trucks and passing out supplies. They were really working hard, doing the grunt work. Someone else asked me about NG and ANG troops. They were all over. Many of the NG troops were directing traffic in both cities, and that was really needed, as both power being out and many of the traffic lights just completely missing. It was impressive to see that many troops working so diligently, helping others when they could have been home in comfort and doing their civilian jobs. [...]

It was not like my experience with other storms. Frederick, in 1979, did nearly as much damage to Mississippi and Alabama, but this monster was much bigger, and the damage will take a lot more to recover from. It will happen, though, and will probably take more than five years to replace all the large structures, like bridges, that were destroyed.