Barbour, Ezell talk hurricane reflections and lessons as Isaias approaches Coast

By Alex Rozier | Originally published by Mississippi Today

BILOXI – Coast residents and officials filed into the Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College’s hospitality center to talk about disaster preparedness as Hurricane Isaias, an expected Category 2 storm as of Thursday, approached the state’s shores. 

The state’s Public Service Commission put on the timely “From Recovery to Resilience” summit, announced a few weeks ago, just before Isaias’ expected landfall on Friday evening. The hurricane’s path shifted east since initial forecasts earlier this week, but as of Thursday Jackson County was under a hurricane warning and all of Mississippi’s Coast was under a storm surge warning. 

Mississippi Emergency Management Agency Director Stephen McCraney said MEMA will likely send National Guard members to support Alabama and Florida, where Isaias is expected to have the greatest impacts.  

But the summit attempted to shift the public’s attention from the short term to the long term: What can we do now to prepare for storms down the road? The event was the PSC’s second in a series of resilience summits, following one in Tupelo over the summer focused on lessons learned from Winter Storm Fern in January. 

Thursday’s edition, led by Southern District Public Service Commissioner Wayne Carr, homed in on hurricanes, and featured speeches from former Gov. Haley Barbour and U.S. Rep. Mike Ezell. 

Ezell, a Coast native elected to Congress in 2023, discussed efforts to improve federal disaster assistance. One bill he introduced last year, for example, would aim to reduce the reporting burden for survivors applying for federal assistance. 

“A mayor, emergency manager or family shouldn’t have to submit the same information over and over again,” he said. 

Another bill Ezell backed would increase the amount of time applicants for assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency would have to appeal denials, from 60 days to 90. That bill passed out of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure in September. 

“ Somebody may have lost their home, they’re dealing with insurance people, they’re replacing documents, they’re talking with contractors,” Ezell said. “All those things compounded, dealing with FEMA can be a nightmare.”

The House has not acted on either bill.

The congressman also said he’s hoping to tackle rising insurance premiums on the Coast, which have skyrocketed since Hurricane Katrina. Ezell criticized FEMA for “relying on outdated hurricane information.”

Barbour, who was in office during Hurricane Katrina in 2005, emphasized a broad approach to preparedness. In the decades before Katrina, the state had prepared for another version of Hurricane Camille in 1969. But the two storms’ impact, it turned out, was completely different, he said. While Camille had stronger winds, Katrina delivered an immense storm surge. 

CLICK HERE: Mississippi Today’s disaster guide

“I thought to myself, ‘Have we prepared for the wrong storm?’” Barbour reflected. 

The former governor also lauded Mississippi’s ability to recover quickly and the confidence it restored in residents. Schools on the Coast, for instance, were able to reopen that November, to his surprise. 

“People had a feeling we would recover,” the ex-governor said. 

This article was originally published by Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Source: Original Article