20 years since Katrina: Local residents detail first-hand accounts of devastating storm

LELAND, NC (WWAY) — Friday marks 20 years since Hurricane Katrina roared ashore along the Gulf Coast, forever changing the landscape and countless lives.

Katrina made landfall near Grand Isle, Louisiana as a category 3 hurricane with sustained winds of 125 miles per hour in the early morning hours of August 29, 2005. It made a second landfall a short time later along the Mississippi and Louisiana border.

The forecast just a few days before called for Katrina to pass safely to the east of the impacted region. But Wilmington resident Jeff Maumus says that quickly changed leading up to landfall.

“Everybody was talking that it was not something we had to worry about. It was going to be  going well off the coast,” Maumus remembers. “It did not make that turn and we were right in the crosshairs.”

Maumus says growing up in New Orleans, hurricane threats were nothing new.

But this one turned out much differently than most due to the catastrophic flooding in the days after Katrina passed as the levees began to fail, flooding more than 80 percent of New Orleans.

Maumus says more than 12 feet of water entered his home, which he couldn’t access for weeks.

“By the time we were able to get back into that, it was October,” Maumus said. “The water had only been down for about a week and a half. Everything just looked like it was melted. All the walls covered in mold, and not much salvageable.”

While New Orleans was affected greatly by the deadly flooding, other parts of the Gulf Coast were devastated by powerful winds and storm surge.

Leland resident Loraine Carbone says the damage was still evident, even more than a year later, when she and a group from local churches went down to Mississippi to help in the lengthy rebuilding process.

“So many buildings and shopping centers were closed,” Carbone recalled. “And in the area we were in, Bay St. Louis, schools were closed, hospitals closed, foundations were all that were left when we took a walk down to the beach areas.”

Being on Katrina’s most dangerous east side, the Mississippi beaches received an estimated 24 to 28 feet of storm surge combined with wind gusts of more than 100 miles per hour.

Carbone says seeing a once thriving community turned into a shell of its former self was hard to take in.

“People moved out of the area. So there wasn’t a connection of community,” Carbone said. “I think that’s what probably struck us more.”

But Carbone and Jeff Maumus both say giving up on the people living in communities along the destroyed part of the Gulf was never an option over the last 20 years.

They feel very strongly about continuing to support those areas, no matter what the future storms may bring.

“It’s important to be part of that process because if you throw in the towel and go home, that special place then just becomes a memory,” Maumus said.

It’s estimated Hurricane Katrina killed more than 1,800 people, with the majority being in New Orleans.

Katrina was retired from the annual hurricane season list, never to be used again.