Almost six months have passed since Hurricane Katrina pounded the Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana coasts.

To most Kansans, that seems like a long time.

Patty Hayden, 53, says it’s not.

“I’ve gotten to where I can talk about it, but I’m not to the point where I can spend much time thinking about it. I try not to go there,” she said.

Though Hayden moved to Lawrence in 1976, she grew up in Bay St. Louis, Miss. Her family’s beachfront home was destroyed.

“I’ve told my neighbors – I live on New Hampshire Street – to stand outside their houses and try to imagine what it would be like if everything around them for two blocks was just rubble,” she said.

“Now instead of two blocks, think 70 miles. That’s what it’s like, everything from Clermont Harbor to Biloxi is just gone.”

It’s true, Hayden said, many of the homes on or near the beach were vacation properties, but townspeople lived there as well.

Lawrence resident Patty Hayden displays a photo of downtown Bay St. Louis, Miss., as it appeared before Hurricane Katrina. Hayden grew up in Bay St. Louis, and she said it's difficult for people to understand the devastation of such a disaster.

Katrina didn’t discriminate.

“They’ve all been destroyed,” she said. “They’re all piles of debris now.”

The hurricane struck Aug. 29. As its six-month anniversary draws near, Hayden said she feared the public has yet to understand the breadth of the destruction.

“We’ve all heard that Katrina was the worst natural disaster in this nation’s history,” she said. “But what we don’t hear is that even without New Orleans – if New Orleans had been spared – it still would have been the worst.

“Just what happened in Mississippi would have been the worst.”

Hayden, who works at Hallmark Cards in Kansas City, Mo., said she had read and watched recent criticism of federal officials’ ham-handed response to Katrina with mixed emotions.

“People are so frustrated that it’s taking so long. It’s like everything is in slow motion,” she said. “But at the same time, the destruction is beyond anything we’ve ever seen before.

“I just want people to understand the scope of what happened,” Hayden said. “I understand that as a citizen, I’m responsible for rebuilding our home. But the nation needs to realize that replacing the infrastructure that’s been lost is more than we can do on our own.”

Hayden’s brother, Lee, and sister, Holly, were in the family’s two-story home when Katrina hit. Winds were clocked at 125 mph.

“Water started coming in the house very quickly at about 8 o’clock in the morning,” she said. “They went upstairs, and they could see the roofing being blown off. At that point, the house became so unstable they both jumped out a window.”

Holly ended up in a grove of cedar trees. Lee climbed on a section of roofing that floated by.

When asked if Lee and Holly were willing to be interviewed, Hayden replied, “No, they’re not to that point yet.”

Behind a large tree at center is Hayden's family home in Bay St. Louis that was destroyed by the hurricane. To the right of the home is the 218-year-old Spanish custom house, the oldest home in the town, which was also leveled.

Hayden, who has five siblings, visited the home site in October and November. She’ll go again in April.

“We go on these salvage trips through the neighborhood, looking for stuff we know is ours,” she said. “It’s amazing what we’ve found and what we haven’t found – we’ve found the marble tops to some of the antiques, but not a single piece of wood furniture and not a single piece of fabric.”

“The house was loaded with books and family photographs,” Hayden said. “We haven’t found a single one.”

They have found some glassware. “We had some bamboo alongside the house,” she said. “Some plates and glasses were wedged inside the bushes.”

Since Katrina, the home site has not been cleared.

“It’s the same as it was the day after the hurricane,” she said.

Hayden is not to be confused with Patti Hayden, the wife of former Gov. Mike Hayden, who also lives in Lawrence.

Uncleared debris

Tish Williams’ mother’s house is next door to Hayden’s family home.

Only the old, deep-rooted trees remain standing at the site of her family's home.

“My mother’s yard hasn’t been cleared, either,” said Williams, who’s also head of Bay St. Louis’ chamber of commerce.

It’s understandable, she said.

“There’s a tremendous amount of debris,” Williams said. “It’s overwhelming.”

She declined comment on federal officials’ response to the disaster.

“We don’t have time to point fingers. There’s too much work to be done,” Williams said. “We’re not whining; we’re not complaining. We’re just taking one day at a time.”

Rebuilding Bay St. Louis, she predicted, will take a decade, at least.

It won’t be easy. The town’s treasury is bare.

“Our tax base has been hurt,” she said. “Our assessor is having to refigure everything because where there used to be a nice house, now there’s a slab.”

Only a few businesses have been able to return. “So our sales tax (collections) are way down,” she said.

A nearby casino is in ruins. “That’s 1,200 people out of work right there,” Williams said.

When asked what a Lawrence-size city could do to help, Williams replied, “I get asked that every day, and the truth is we really don’t know – we’re so deep in the trenches and the devastation is so great, it’s hard to think.”

Others, she said, have stepped in.

“The faith-based groups that have come in have been amazing,” Williams said. “They’re our heroes. They didn’t wait for an invitation, they just came; they didn’t wait to be told what to do, they just dug in and did it.

“And the amazing thing is they’re still coming.”

Lawrence’s First United Methodist Church sent teams to Bay St. Louis in October, November and December. It’s looking for someone to coordinate a trip in March.

“Spring break is full,” said Sara Wentz, director of discipleship ministries at the church. “So many college students are going down to help, there’s no room.”

‘It’s hard to grasp’

Wentz said she, too, is worried that Katrina’s destruction has become old news.

“Unless you’ve been there, it’s hard to grasp – what you see on TV is nothing compared to what it’s really like,” said Wentz, who went to Bay St. Louis in October.

“We’d drive past these modest homes that were still standing and looked OK from the outside,” she said. “But after we’d been there a while we realized that on the inside these houses were a complete mess – I mean, they’d had raw sewage in them up to the ceiling. Everything had to be thrown out.”