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Mid-state resident looks back on 4 years of Hurricane Katrina relief work

Mark Wolfe
/
FEMA

MURFREESBORO, Tenn. (WMOT)  --  It was on this date in 2005 that Hurricane Katrina made landfall at Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, with sustained winds of 125 miles a hour.

The storm took the lives of more than 1200 people and inflicted well over $100 billion in property damage.

Tens of thousands of disaster aid volunteers descended on the gulf coast in the weeks and months that followed. Among them, mid-state resident Craig Snow who now works with the Brentwood based disaster relief agency Hope Force.

Snow traveled to Mississippi just days after the storm passed to help friends. He planned to stay two weeks and ended up doing relief work in the area for four years.

Snow says to this day he still tries to avoid thinking about what he witnessed immediately after the storm. He says the level of destruction was hard to take in.

“The sticks that used to represent houses that were just tossed in bundles and batches and to see the expressions on faces of the homeowners that not only lost their home but lost their community.”

Ten years on, Snow says many storm survivors have still not fully recovered all that they lost. He’s back in Mississippi this week directing still more Katrina relief work.

“One of the families we’re serving has been living on their shrimp boat for eight years after the FEMA trailer was pulled out of their lot and they’re finally – ten years after the event – just now going to have a home of their own.”

Snow says there have been some silver linings. He says he’s made lifelong friends among storm survivors and other disaster aid volunteers.

Use the link below to hear the full 15 minute interview with Craig Snow of Hope Force.