Hurricane Katrina: 20 years later
MISSISSIPPI, NEW ORLEANS LA. (WCBI) “It was shocking.” said Desiree Krieger, Moved to Columbus due to Katrina. “We knew it was going to happen eventually, but we did not think that it was going to happen in our lifetime. ”
“We had a lot of friends that lost houses and they mostly get flooded, and it was a pretty traumatic experience overall.” said Colin Krieger, Moved to Columbus due to Katrina.
Colin and Desiree Krieger had just gotten married, and were living on the coast when Hurricane Katrina hit 20 years ago.
“It is still traumatic thinking about it today, we do not like watching the documentaries, and we had some friends we lost from the coast.” said Krieger. “One of my best friends who did evacuate, I met him on the side of the highway near Meridian, he happened to call me because his car broke down and they could not get gas. All of his family houses and everything were gone.”
Katrina brought a storm surge of nearly 28 feet to some parts of the coast, wiping away homes and businesses.
It also brought families, like the Kriegers, to Columbus.
Colin Krieger said seeing the damage done to their home and others was surreal.
“It was just blue tarps and debris and trash everywhere. The reason we came up here is because we thought “hey once it is cleaned up, we will go back to New Orleans or go back to the coast.” After several years of checking up on it, and still seeing it in destruction, we decided to stay up here.” MOVED TO COLUMBUS DUE TO KATRINA
T.J. Tate was in the national guard, and also a photographer for WCBI in 2005. He captured these images of the devastation.
“We got a chance to take pictures of everything.” said Tate. “That is why one of the pictures I shot was an actual railroad track. It looked like ribbons and cloth because the storm had actually taken it and twisted it up, and it was just devastating.”
Nearly two thousand people died from the effects of the Hurricane.
Some chose not to evacuate.
Krieger said, he and his wife would have probably been among those if they would not have rethought their decision.
“We were not planning on going.” said Krieger. We had a couple of hurricane hunters at the Kessler AirForce base, and they gave me a heads up that it might be time to go. We came home and put a couple of things in the back of the truck and evacuated. If we would not have done that, we would not be here right now, and not just here in Columbus, we would not be here on earth.”
The Krieger family tells WCBI, Hurricane Katrina taught them to take severe weather more seriously. They said now when bad weather is in the area, they take precautions and stay prepared.
