By the numbers, the storm claimed the lives 1,833 people and displaced more than a million. It also caused more than $120 billion in damage.

Ten years after the hurricane, parts of the Gulf Coast are still on the mend.

Long Road to Recovery, Hope Deferred
Gloria Sanders, a Katrina survivor from Pass Christian, Mississippi, spent much of the summer of 2015 recovering from knee replacement surgery.
After six long weeks of rest and rehabilitation, Sanders started to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Her outlook was much different when Hurricane Katrina destroyed her home and city in 2005.

"There just didn't seem to be any immediate recovery after Katrina; it was like I don't know when this is going to be over," Sanders reflected. "It was just a trudging through every day hoping to get to a place where we could finally see some daylight." (Screengrab via CBN News)

CBN News returned to the coastal city to follow up with Sanders 10 years after she was featured on The 700 Club when the storm decimated the Gulf Coast.

She is back on her feet now and in a new home, but it has been a long, hard road for all who decided to stay and rebuild in this Mississippi coastal community.

"The people of [Pass Christian] are survivors, and this is home for them," Sanders explained. "And there's no getting that sense of home somewhere else."

A Storm for the Ages
When Hurricane Katrina made landfall, Aug. 29, 2005, it was a strong Category 3 storm with 125 mph sustained winds and a 28 ft. historic storm surge.

Most of the initial news coverage focused on New Orleans, where flooding swamped 80 percent of the city.

Smaller cities, like Pass Christian, which lost 34 residents, didn't get much attention even though the destruction was far greater.

In an interview with the mayor, Leo "Chipper" McDermott told CBN News Hurricane Katrina left the small bedroom community "the closest to annihilation you can get to."

"Every church, every school, and every public building was either totally destroyed or unusable," McDermott said.

The personal toll didn't fare much better. Of the city's 3,000 homes, only 300 were deemed livable, reducing the housing count 90 percent overnight.
"It was questionable whether we were going to be a city again," the mayor recalled. (Screengrab via CBN News)

Rebuilding 'The Pass'
CBN News was among the first media crews to make its way into Pass Christian, bringing national attention to the devastation. Now, a decade later, there are signs of new life for a community also devastated by another storm, Camille, in 1969.

On a tour of the town locals affectionately refer to as "the Pass," Mayor McDermott proudly showed off a newly expanded $35 million harbor, though many of the boat slips sit empty.

"Everything we have is new," McDermott explained. "The infrastructure is new. The public buildings are new. What we have is better than what we had before. We just don't have as much of it."

But a deeper look, past the new homes and businesses, reveals Katrina's physical scars: empty lots, bare concrete slabs, fewer residents, and a seafood-driven economy struggling to overcome the effects of the storm and the BP oil spill in 2010.

Then again, some changes can only be felt.

"We had a sense of family," Sanders explained. "Everybody knew everybody. I knew everybody on my street before, and there are neighbors that I don't know. There was a sense of community that hasn't quite gotten back there yet."

Five miles west across a two mile, four lane bridge connecting Pass Christian to Bay St. Louis, Lakeshore Baptist Church has been putting the finishing touches on its new building.

The church delayed construction on a new sanctuary to focus on serving people in the wake of the storm, a work that began in makeshift tents.
Now it operates a second-hand shop, Mercy House Distribution Center, where "customers" are welcome to take donated clothes, food, and trinkets - all free of charge.

Marsha Christmas of Waveland regularly shops at Mercy House. She told CBN News the ministry has been a lifeline for many in need.

The church's generosity made an impact on Ruth Boyd, who initially came to pick up things she needed when she moved back, but she found much more.

"I ended up joining the church and becoming a volunteer," said Boyd, a Kansas native who describes her fellow volunteers as family.

Healing Through Serving Others
Don Elbourne, Lakeshore's pastor, said while Katrina brought heartache and pain, it also opened the door to healing through serving others.
"Seeing God use the folks in our church to help others and help our community has made our church stronger than it has ever been before," Elbourne commented.

The congregation, with the help of volunteer missions groups from across the country, has built more than 40 homes. Elbourne told CBN News that's pretty significant given that's more homes than the number of church members.

While the region's population is still climbing back to pre-Katrina levels, some new transplants, like David Faulkner—rector of Trinity Episcopal Church—now call the area "home."

"It's a special place down here, and the parish and the community—it's a resurrection story," Rev. Faulkner explained. "There was death. There was destruction, and now there's a more vibrant life than we could have imagined."

Everyone CBN News interviewed wanted America to know one thing.

"I know our world is in a terrible shape right now," Boyd said. "But there's still compassionate people in the world."

Mayor McDermott shared the same sentiment.

"The greatest thing we learned from [Katrina] is we are Americans, because we didn't do this by ourselves. We'd still be completely upside down. The American people taught us that there's good everywhere," McDermott said.

"We cannot only look at the people in the Pass who had the determination to survive but to all those people across the nation who helped us," Sanders added. "We have to say thank you, because we could not have done it on our own."

They speak not only for themselves. Their voices are a reflection of a people who represent the resilience of the region through the strength and generosity of a nation.

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