Katrina 20 Years Later: Stories of Survival, Service & Southern Grit

August 2025 marks 20 years since Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast.

In this deeply personal and powerful conversation, host Michael Paul is joined by Major General (Ret.) Larry Harrington and former Escambia County Commissioner Gene Valentino to reflect on the disaster response, community resilience, and leadership under crisis.

From harrowing tales of lost communication and looting, to unexpected kindness from neighbors and the military delivering MREs like ice cream trucks — this episode paints a vivid picture of how Mississippians pulled together when it mattered most.

Learn how preparation, faith, and unity played critical roles in surviving one of the worst natural disasters in U.S. history.

This is more than a history lesson — it’s a call to lead, to prepare, and to never forget.

🎙️ Featuring:

• Major General Larry Harrington (Task Force Engineer during Katrina)
• Gene Valentino (Former Escambia County Commissioner)
• Michael Paul, Ted Tibbett (Radio Hosts)

🌪️ A must-watch for anyone interested in emergency response, disaster preparedness, and human resilience.

➡️ Join the Conversation: https://GeneValentino.com
➡️ WMXI Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/NewsRadio981
➡️ More WMXI Interviews: https://genevalentino.com/wmxi-interviews/
➡️ More GrassRoots TruthCast Episodes: https://genevalentino.com/grassroots-truthcast-with-gene-valentino/
➡️ More Broadcasts with Gene as the Guest: https://genevalentino.com/america-beyond-the-noise/
➡️ More About Gene Valentino: https://genevalentino.com/about-gene-valentino/

Transcript

0:00
 Good morning for the Southern Pond Electric Weather Center.

 0:03
 Here is your latest local forecast.

 0:05
 67 light rain at Noble Field in Laurel.

 0:07
 Looks like 70 braiding.

 0:09
 You know, I say that I I don't mean that we are marking the anniversary because there's no celebration to be had about Katrina.

 0:18
 I can tell you from personal experience, it was something that I will never forget.

 0:21
 We have a couple of guests this morning.

 0:23
 We have Major General Larry Harrington who was in charge of the National Guard during Hurricane Katrina recovery and we have from Pensacola, FL, we have former Escambia County Commissioner Jean Valentino.

 0:38
 And so I'd like to welcome both of you guys back in and, and a good morning to you.

 0:42
 Ted's also with us as usual, Ted and I are here every morning.

 0:46
 But but Ted, you know, we, we wanted to, to talk to, to these guys about, about some of the things that that they experienced during this, during this thing.

 0:57
 What did you see, General Harrington?

 1:00
 What was the one thing that you saw?

 1:02
 I remember what it was for me and I told you earlier, but what was the, the one thing that you saw that you said, Oh my God, what, what are we doing here?

 1:13
 What has happened?

 1:14
 Yeah, before let me say that I wasn't in, I wasn't in charge of the National Guard.

 1:20
 I was in charge of the task force, which was called task force engineer later.

 1:26
 I was, I, you know, I had about 1/3 of the forces, which are about almost 12,000 National Guard soldiers involved with this.

 1:33
 But I was very proud to, to represent and lead those formations.

 1:39
 But the one thing that stood out to me, and I'd, I'd almost have to break it down, Michael, into, into phases, you know, the, the, the, the preparation.

 1:48
 Of course, as a leader, you're going and looking at what plans you have available.

 1:52
 Imagine it against resources.

 1:53
 How do you get into a communication mode where you can get into a, a critical thinking process?

 1:59
 So those sort of things upfront.

 2:02
 I can remember saying, you know, I'm not getting situation awareness.

 2:06
 We, there's no communications that we, we don't know really what's going on here.

 2:11
 So that's when I broke out and with the vehicles and even on foot and helicopter tried to get that assessment that was so critical so that you could, you know, respond.

 2:22
 And I just remember thinking, oh boy, we're in trouble here because we couldn't get that situational awareness.

 2:30
 We did not have the communications.

 2:32
 I couldn't move the things that we needed to move in, in terms of equipment and personnel and subsistence and, and in the forms of Mr.

 2:42
 ES, ice water and those sort of things.

 2:44
 That was the first thing that hit me was the magnitude of what this was going to be in terms of response.

 2:51
 You know, communication is important.

 2:53
 And I remember very vividly, you know, nobody's cell phones work.

 2:57
 The cell towers had all gone underwater.

 3:00
 We, we couldn't communicate with each other.

 3:02
 We would have to send messages through people to other people the old way, the, the old fashioned way was the only way to get a message out.

 3:10
 And so as a leader of a group of men, that many people you had to be like really concerned that I can't communicate.

 3:18
 How do you set those communications up?

 3:20
 I mean, you do this during wars.

 3:22
 How do you do it during a, a hurricane?

 3:26
 Well, you approach it very much like the Moore, you know, you have redundancy built in.

 3:30
 It's a basic, you know, communications through a series of, of meetings and staff meetings and so forth.

 3:37
 The, the voice communication face to face.

 3:40
 And then it moves quickly into the electronic communications to include the radio.

 3:47
 And I'm talking about the, you know, you know, site to site type radio, your military radios that have the security devices and so forth.

 3:56
 And that's what we ended up using and trying to set up, you know, relay towers along the coast and getting straight lines of communication so that our radios work.

 4:07
 A little side note of that is that that a lot of my units had just returned from from Iraq and and Iraq that we'd gotten just.

 4:19
 So we got kind of lazy because we were using cell phones to communicate with and they had lost the skill set of setting up FM radio and being able to talk across, yeah, talk across those channels.

 4:34
 So it was a challenge that there.

 4:36
 And certainly we didn't have like I did in Afghanistan where you had drones and had other types of satellite communication and that sort of thing.

 4:44
 So I had to resort to, you know, just like the Roman Legionnaires where you set times where subordinate commanders or staff would come and report and give situational awareness.

 4:55
 Report.

 4:56
 Yeah.

 4:56
 That, that that had to be tough, I know.

 4:58
 But I I'd have this one story that I wanted to tell.

 5:01
 And and it just hit me when you were talking there, there was no communication.

 5:06
 The phones didn't work, you know, the push button phones.

 5:08
 And everybody had a phone in their home back then.

 5:11
 A lot of people don't now because of the the advent of cell phones, but I went, of course, I was across the way at a neighbour's house.

 5:19
 We swam out of our house and went to our neighbour's house who who did not go underwater and he had an old Rotary dial phone that would work.

 5:29
 It actually worked.

 5:30
 If you dialed out on the Rotary phone, you could work, get it to work, but none of the push button phones work with the tones.

 5:36
 That was all down.

 5:37
 That was the craziest thing.

 5:38
 The the, the oldest form of communication that that we had that, that the Rotary dial phone.

 5:45
 He became very confident.

 5:46
 He became it only that's the only thing that worked.

 5:51
 That's crazy.

 5:53
 Well, it was a real challenge and it concerned me because again, we couldn't get into the critical thinking and decision making that an organization responding to any emergency needs to get into situational awareness was so important.

 6:09
 Yeah, it is.

 6:10
 Gene, I'm going to bring you in here for a minute.

 6:12
 And, and you were at a distance and you were watching and you saw what was going on.

 6:17
 What was your first take about this storm and, and what you saw from the Pensacola area?

 6:23
 Well, we had just, we had just recovered from Hurricane Ivan over here, which was a Category 5.

 6:31
 At first blush, I thought, well, it's not as bad, it's only a category 3.

 6:36
 But let me tell you, that's an that's a very misleading issue.

 6:40
 Poor could folks in Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama category 3 or not, it prolonged itself and hovered over the the whole Gulf Coast area there, which is where the damage occurred.

 6:56
 1 I think it was around 1800 people had passed away.

 7:01
 It it was truly a disaster.

 7:03
 I mean compare that to the 1200 people that were just murdered two years ago and by Hamas in Israel.

 7:11
 I mean, this is really a a major crisis and the billions of dollars of damage it, it caused people to wake up and I think it preparedness and response that the general was talking about exposed serious weaknesses in the disaster responses both at the state and local and federal levels.

 7:37
 We we've learned a lot and we've grown since then and we certainly are more accustomed to reciprocating with each other in terms of resources.

 7:47
 You're never totally prepared for one of these things.

 7:50
 So the question is what?

 7:53
 How are you leading?

 7:54
 How are you bringing your best put, best put, best foot forward?

 7:58
 1,000,000 people were displaced and some of them ended up over here in Pensacola.

 8:04
 School system percentage attendances jumped almost 88 to 10% right after Katrina from the whole region coming eastbound our way to the Panhandle.

 8:17
 Yeah, It, that's it.

 8:18
 It was funny, but I remember, you know, a lot of the folks from New Orleans went to Houston and and a lot of people just stayed, you know, many people.

 8:26
 I remember people leaving the coast and coming to to Hattiesburg.

 8:29
 Ted There were so many people in Hattiesburg that were from the coast.

 8:32
 In fact, to this day, I still run into people who decided to make a life here in the Pine Belt because they lost everything on the coast.

 8:41
 I mean, did you did you notice that, Ted Oh, very much so.

 8:45
 And you know, in that 20 years plus since then, take cities like Lucedale, Wiggins, Picayune, Poplaville, they have grown dramatically just because people live there now.

 8:55
 Hattiesburg During Katrina, power started going off on Sunday night into Monday morning.

 9:01
 The radio station went off the air.

 9:03
 We had a generator at the transmitter site, but we didn't have power at the station.

 9:09
 But through a miracle of of of God or the people of Southern Part Electric, they got us back on by that early evening on Monday night.

 9:18
 And we were probably one of five radio stations in South Mississippi that was still on the air.

 9:23
 And, you know, we were trying to tell people in Asbury to do everything was shut down.

 9:27
 There was no power around the city except the few little people, I guess, from the Southern Pine area.

 9:33
 And, and they went out on the limb to get us back on air 'cause we needed communication.

 9:37
 And so we immediately started telling people what to do.

 9:40
 The one thing I'll tell you real quickly that came out of this, it was good.

 9:44
 You got to know your neighbors and everybody became friendly.

 9:47
 And the guy down the street would come up and say, hey, there's some gas over in 49 and such and such.

 9:52
 Or, you know, I've got a gas grill here.

 9:54
 We're going to cook out tonight.

 9:55
 We're going to clean out the freezer.

 9:56
 And so the community came together and tried.

 9:59
 But the next day, it was like mushrooms growing up after a storm.

 10:03
 On about Tuesday morning, there were trucks parked on on the side of the road selling generators and chainsaws from Indiana.

 10:10
 They just came down, you know, like a locust down here at a very inflated price too, by the way.

 10:16
 Yeah, that's that's not the time to buy generator after a storm.

 10:19
 It's it's before the storm.

 10:22
 Hey, Gene, you don't buy generators after a storm, do you?

 10:26
 Well, I'd hate to wire it up with a with a flood up to your knees.

 10:29
 I'll tell you.

 10:31
 Well, a lot of people lost their generators during Katrina because they went underwater.

 10:36
 Had a friend that lived right on the beach and his home was obviously gutted and his generator was completely worthless after after that.

 10:43
 So, you know, I guess it, it really doesn't matter if you're in the wrong place at the wrong time.

 10:48
 You, you can, you can possibly lose everything.

 10:51
 General, let's get back to to what you know, you were faced with here on in South Mississippi in the Gulf Coast.

 10:59
 You know, there were lots of looters that showed up.

 11:03
 And, you know, I've often wondered what I mean, I was in the military, but obviously I was never deployed anywhere inside the continental United States to do something.

 11:13
 What what were your troops advised and how do you handle the looting situation?

 11:19
 Well, you know, the first of all, this has to be in close, close coordination with law enforcement.

 11:25
 We did 3000 what we call presence control patrols, literally just going through neighborhoods, having a presence pretty much like what you're seeing in in DC.

 11:37
 And of course, from a commander's standpoint, you know, I have confidence of my soldiers as far as being trained to be warriors in combat.

 11:46
 Sometimes in law enforcement, you don't want to walk around with the presence of, you know, AR weapons around your shoulder looking like you're ready to, to return fire, you know what I'm saying?

 11:56
 But so we had to, to balance that with, but there were 600 and something rest in the first few days of, of that event that I was aware of.

 12:06
 And looting was a problem.

 12:09
 It wasn't as big of a problem as what I've read in other places.

 12:15
 It's one of the, it's one of the great things and, and Gene alluded to it is, is really the population.

 12:21
 And I'm a firm believer now that a population has to have a, an ability, an ability to survive these sort of things through a series of what I call informal contracts.

 12:36
 Basically, for 96 hours, you're going to realize that nobody's going to come save you and you need to have the provisions and the capability to survive 96 hours so that the ones that really need need you, you know, we'll get get those resources.

 12:52
 But back to the law enforcement, we did have that as part of our mission, but it was, I stressed the the emphasis for my soldiers to work very closely with local law enforcement officials.

 13:05
 And I think the presence certainly prevented a lot of that.

 13:10
 But generally speaking, we had civilians in this state that asked the question there's and what I found in emergency situations that the human nature, there's two types of people.

 13:21
 There's the ones that asked what?

 13:24
 And there's the ones that asked why, the ones that asked why or it's kind of reacted why this happened, Why did it happen to me?

 13:31
 And that, you know, that transformed real quickly and why aren't you helping me first?

 13:36
 Why, why, why?

 13:38
 And then there's the ones that ask what, you know, what do I need to do to survive?

 13:42
 What do I need to do and ensure my family survives my community to survive.

 13:46
 Very proactive to where you see citizens becoming soldiers and soldiers becoming citizens in a way that benefits the community.

 13:55
 We had chainsaws.

 13:56
 We had tractors.

 13:58
 I saw a tractor coming down my street and it was somebody who lived up the road that was with his bucket up his tractor.

 14:05
 He was pushing debris that from an apartment complex that was on the beach that had washed up the road.

 14:13
 And, you know, he was pushing that stuff out of the way to get down toward where we were.

 14:19
 And so, you know, you had you had so many people.

 14:22
 And that's the the what people?

 14:23
 What can I do?

 14:24
 Let me get out here with my chainsaw and start clearing the road up.

 14:27
 Let me get out here with my tractor and start pushing this stuff out of the way so we can get emergency vehicles in and and so for days.

 14:35
 And you're not kidding when you say you better be prepared for at least three days of nobody getting to you because it was about that long.

 14:42
 But I'll tell you this, General, one of the greatest sights that I ever saw, me and my middle son were walking down on the beach, just looking around, and there was a helicopter flying by.

 14:55
 It was a Coast Guard helicopter.

 14:57
 That helicopter, forgive me, landed on the beach and gave us Mr.

 15:05
 ES.

 15:06
 And I was so appreciative of that, and I'll never forget it.

 15:10
 We flew 400 sorties a day and you know, we would move them to predesignated distribution points.

 15:19
 And I had taken my equipment that, you know, we moved our dozers and large equipment onto clear roads.

 15:25
 And we would actually load those low beds, if you know what a low bed is.

 15:29
 And we'd load those things with ice water and Mr.

 15:32
 ES and kind of go through these neighborhoods like an ice cream man and everybody would come out.

 15:38
 It was, it was emotional, Michael, just like you expressed, it's very emotional comes back to you and you just, you just remember it like it was yesterday.

 15:47
 It was such a tough time for all of us.

 15:50
 And, and my, my son had stepped on a nail and, and he was bleeding and, and you know, the here comes the Coast Guard guys and, and I was just, I can't tell you how thankful I was for them.

 16:01
 It's for them just to stop to, to land that helicopter and give us food.

 16:06
 I mean, it was God bless the Coast Guard is all I can say.

 16:10
 And it's, you know, what I call and there and there's actually a formal kind of an organization now that that that teaches this 96 hour and it's preservation, you may say.

 16:26
 And they it it seems to be formalized now.

 16:29
 I I spoke to him years ago.

 16:30
 But, you know, how does a community survive either natural or man made disasters?

 16:39
 What is the citizenry's responsibility?

 16:43
 And I, I hope we've learned that as an individual, we have a responsibility not only to ourselves, but to the community to take care of ourselves, to be able to take care of ourselves so that the real emergencies can be, you know, administered or two.

 17:01
 Yeah.

 17:01
 My, my home was gutted.

 17:03
 I had nothing.

 17:04
 We were sleeping outside, mosquitoes were eating us up.

 17:08
 And it was, it was the worst experience of my life.

 17:10
 And just a little comfort that you get from from folks in the military and folks like the Coast Guard that helped us out.

 17:19
 And then later some of your, some of your, I'm sure you were commanding some of these guys that brought us Mr.

 17:26
 ES later.

 17:27
 They were just driving up and down the road in our neighborhoods.

 17:30
 That was my folks doing that.

 17:32
 And you know, we had and they were they were a hero, Josh Russell, who was a soldier of ours and he was in the 890th Engineer Battalion.

 17:42
 And and that Sunday broke to go help an elderly and you may remember he was killed in an in an accident.

 17:49
 Those are the kind of heroes that that come to mind as we're sitting here talking that that had 400 soldiers at their houses were either destroyed or damaged and needed repair.

 18:00
 And they were in formation that next morning, that Sunday morning, they were in formation ready to go help others.

 18:08
 Just tremendous.

 18:08
 We had it it.

 18:09
 Thank God for those guys and for you for doing what you did for us because we really needed help.

 18:15
 I mean, this was not folks, I'm not a I'm not a person that will, you know, go out and ask for help.

 18:22
 And I didn't have to, thankfully we had folks like you that were coming in and helping us.

 18:26
 But you know, that was just an amazing time in my life.

 18:29
 I lost so much, but yet, you know, you're, you're right.

 18:33
 You know, you, you have this sense of survival, or at least I did.

 18:36
 Resiliency is what it is.

 18:39
 Look, I was surviving.

 18:40
 I knew I had to survive whatever it took.

 18:42
 And, and then slowly but surely, the the cavalry came and they started helping us.

 18:49
 And, you know, power was coming back on and life kind of went back kind of to normal, except for the fact that, you know, we had lived.

 18:58
 We were living in a FEMA trailer for for a while after the storm while the house was being reconstructed, but it was a difficult time.

 19:07
 And that's just my story.

 19:08
 Let me tell you something.

 19:09
 I didn't have have it nearly as bad as some people.

 19:12
 There were people that were literally trapped in their homes.

 19:15
 There were people that died.

 19:16
 And so, you know, I'm thankful that I made it through and it.

 19:21
 Hey, let me tell you this, General, and, and I'll and I'll tell you too, Gene.

 19:24
 If y'all ever catch me near the beach on the Gulf Coast and a hurricane's on the way, I want you to knock me in the head and drag me out of there.

 19:35
 I'll jump in real quick, guys, as we go to news at the bottom of the hour, this is the difference in Mississippi and the city of New Orleans.

 19:42
 They just panicked, did nothing, went to the Superdome and lived in crap and let the national news complain about what's going on.

 19:48
 Mississippi pulled up their socks and went to work and did something.

 19:52
 And people like General what versus why?

 19:55
 Yeah, it's the bottom of the hour, 7:30.

 19:58
 We'll take a quick break.

 19:59
 We've got Major General retired, Larry Harrington and we've got to Jean Valentino, Michael Paul and yours truly.

 20:06
 We're back in a moment.

 20:08
 I'm 34 and here's Michael with our weather.

 20:12
 Good morning from the Good morning from the Southern Pine Electric Weather Center.

 20:16
 Here is your latest local forecast.

 20:19
 Looks like 67 at Noble Field in Laurel, 70 at Bobby Chain Airport here in Hattiesburg.

 20:23
 We've got some rain throughout the the.

 20:26
 Area here in the Pine Belt and pretty much all over the southern part of the state.

 20:30
 An 80% chance.

 20:31
 We'll see that today.

 20:32
 Mostly cloudy.

 20:33
 Your high near 80° tonight.

 20:35
 A 60% chance of showers.

 20:36
 Mostly cloudy 69 Saturday, partly sunny with a high of 83.

 20:41
 A 70% chance of showers tomorrow and and looks like Saturday night at drops to a 30% and mostly cloudy with a low down to 68.

 20:51
 Sunday, a 70% chance of showers, 83 for your high under partly cloudy skies.

 20:55
 And for Labor Day, it looks like it's going to be a pretty nice day.

 20:58
 Partly sunny, 84 for your high and about a 40% chance of afternoon showers and thunderstorms across the state.

 21:06
 Right now.

 21:07
 Temperature wise, I have not updated these so this these are a little bit old.

 21:11
 60 in Tupelo, 67 in Jackson, 71 in Natchez and 73 in Biloxi.

 21:16
 Our city of the day-to-day, Burnsville, MN.

 21:19
 Looks like they have partly cloudy skies there.

 21:21
 63° That's your weather from the Southern Pine electric Weather center.

 21:25
 You know, general and Gene.

 21:27
 Gene's going to have to leave in just a few minutes.

 21:29
 I I wanted to get something else with him, but I was reminded on, on a text from a friend who's listening this morning who said that if you got those Mr.

 21:40
 ES and you had peanut butter or the pumpkin cake in it, you hit the jackpot.

 21:44
 And, and I laughed and, and you know, it reminded me those, those meals were so good and they were so delicious because I was so hungry and they're so filling and they give you so much energy.

 21:55
 I've never had Mr.

 21:56
 ES.

 21:56
 I was AC ration guy from back in the day, but I had them during, during Katrina.

 22:01
 And I wanted to point out that about a year later, I had some leftover and we, we broke them out and we started eating them.

 22:07
 They weren't near as good when I wasn't hungry.

 22:13
 And which reminded me of what my grandmother used to always say.

 22:16
 There's nothing that makes a meal taste any better than hunger.

 22:20
 Well, and you know, the MRE's were the the freeze dried a lot of freeze dried substance in and they were the the old other earth sea rations was cans if you remember.

 22:31
 But yeah, do I remember?

 22:32
 I still got my P38 on my can.

 22:34
 There you go.

 22:34
 And you know, the the freeze dried there's I was always amazed at how creative people could come with this freeze dried.

 22:42
 You know, they could take freeze dried Peaches and crunch it up with the crackers and make a Peach cobbler that would certainly rival in.

 22:49
 So yeah, you got to give it to those military guys, man.

 22:53
 They can come up with some great stuff.

 22:55
 But you know, which reminds me of what General Patton's always said, I love, I love this saying.

 23:00
 He said, tell a man what to do.

 23:02
 Don't tell him how to do it.

 23:03
 He'll amaze you with his ingenuity.

 23:08
 Gene, one last thing.

 23:10
 I was, I was going to talk to you about the, about the help we received and, and the, the state of Florida was very, very good to us.

 23:18
 They, they said, I remember seeing Florida State troopers working intersections in Ocean Springs.

 23:25
 I didn't recall seeing any Escambia County Sheriff's Department.

 23:28
 But you were telling me as we were texting that they, you guys did send a bunch of folks over here.

 23:34
 Yeah.

 23:34
 All the way over to all the way over to.

 23:36
 We had all the way over to New Orleans.

 23:39
 We had some, some of the share of the sheriff, Ron Mcneesby at the time over here in Escambia County had mobilized a few different efforts.

 23:48
 One was supply and the other was response.

 23:53
 As you said, the traffic control and some law enforcement.

 23:57
 There was a regrettably, some of the lessons we learned from these disasters is that there's some wrongdoers that will take advantage of pilfering and stealing and stuff like that.

 24:09
 And we assisted in some of that within the Biloxi and Hattiesburg area.

 24:14
 We also brought over a whole bunch of generators and I, I think they were supportive to some of the mustering areas that were set up around the around the state.

 24:29
 And we did a, a part, I'd say small part for ice and, and, and all the different things.

 24:36
 They were away.

 24:38
 Yeah.

 24:38
 But it was a, it was a good thing to be part of and I was glad we were.

 24:43
 OK, General, go ahead.

 24:44
 No, I was, I was just going to point out that a lot of that wasn't from the, that nefarious activity was not from locals.

 24:51
 It, the people travelled many, many miles to come and do bad things in this area during that time, just like they do in any other emergency.

 25:00
 But they were taking advantage of a bad situation and they came far from, you know, long distances to do it.

 25:06
 You know, a few days.

 25:07
 I remember you made me remember something a few days after when we were able to get out and to be able to move around a little bit, they were starting to get the streets cleared.

 25:16
 You had National Guard guys that were around all of the major neighborhoods and St.

 25:21
 intersections, and those guys would make you show your ID that you actually lived in the area before they would let you in there.

 25:29
 I love that.

 25:30
 Yeah, exactly.

 25:32
 And there again, it goes back to that.

 25:34
 I talked about presence control.

 25:36
 The military has a a sense of comfort for folks that are are distressed.

 25:42
 And, you know, there's there's a sense of security when they're doing just exactly what you talked about.

 25:47
 That was one of the techniques we used.

 25:49
 Yeah.

 25:49
 They they they would and and they got to know you.

 25:52
 The same guys would be there and they would say, OK, man, come on.

 25:55
 You know, it was it was great.

 25:57
 It was great.

 25:58
 It was like having your own personal security.

 26:00
 Those guys were.

 26:01
 Yeah.

 26:01
 And they had those M sixteens over their shoulder.

 26:03
 They sure did.

 26:08
 All right.

 26:08
 So, Ted, well, you know, we're backed a lot about the Gulf Coast and, and of course, here in Hattiesburg, there was no power.

 26:16
 And, and see, let me tell you what, for a, for a few weeks I went and stayed, we stayed at our farm, which is in Beaumont.

 26:24
 We didn't have power in the beginning, but we did finally get power.

 26:27
 But even after we got power, we didn't have water for a while.

 26:30
 Then we, it was miserable, but at least we could sleep in the air conditioning and didn't have to worry about the, the mosquitoes.

 26:37
 When what was the power situation in, in the Hattiesburg area and how did that work out?

 26:42
 Well, it was up to seven days or more before everyone got power back here.

 26:46
 Took a pretty good while I remember.

 26:50
 And we've had them on the air before.

 26:52
 Our friends from Mississippi Power Company, we're on that day that Katrina hit.

 26:57
 The president of Mississippi Power Company made the statement today.

 27:00
 I do not have a single customer, and that's in the whole Mississippi.

 27:04
 Think about Mississippi Power.

 27:07
 Yeah, you know, and up, up down the coast and all the South Mississippi said today, I do not have a single customer, including himself, you know, and, and that was just absolutely horrible.

 27:17
 I guess that's the, the the hardest thing up here was to get adjusted to no power.

 27:22
 And then it sounds selfish almost, but no air conditioning, you know, about the third or fourth night, you start to get a little freaky when it is just blazing.

 27:32
 It is not selfish to walk air conditioning in South Mississippi.

 27:37
 When it goes out, we all lose our minds.

 27:39
 We call the air conditioning guy and we will pay him anything to come get it fixed.

 27:43
 Well, this radio station, I told you we got power within 24 hours from Southern Pine.

 27:48
 Thank God for their good service and their realization that the station need to be on the air.

 27:53
 But we became like Motel 6.

 27:56
 I mean, you know, you try to be on there talking about it and somebody's sleeping in the corner on the floor over there.

 28:01
 Well, you're not only hungry for food, you're hungry for information and guidance.

 28:05
 So this, you know, being able to come on back on the air and and talk to folks was very comforting, I'm sure.

 28:11
 But you know what, the people responded and religions responded.

 28:15
 Virtually every religion, if you're Pentecostal, if you're Catholic or you're Protestant or whatever you might be, they had groups that came into town offering relief and helping with food and with chainsaws and clearing up and all and, and no money was charged for this.

 28:31
 Now you had these other people, all of a sudden you saw so and so's tree service from Iowa, and he's in a truck going up and down the street and charging exorbitant rate to cut a tree off your house.

 28:42
 But want cash?

 28:43
 Yeah, want cash.

 28:44
 You have to make a deal.

 28:45
 They were everywhere but the religious organizations and and we had account after account on the air says put me some on the air.

 28:53
 Tell them that I'm willing to help and do you know, and and that's if there's any good that came out of this the community that came together.

 29:00
 I hope we never have to face it again.

 29:02
 But I was pretty impressive with the response of the people here and I think our Depot southern religion and good old boy neighborhood, the fact that we grew up that way and our mom or daddy or grandmama would slap us if we didn't act like what song country boy will survive.

 29:17
 That's exactly right.

 29:19
 You know, I tell a story about I'd set up a mini distribution in my backyard in lake serene.

 29:25
 My wife and my two boys had come.

 29:27
 Boys would come back home and be with their mom and they live rather large and in the backyard camped out around a fire.

 29:34
 And I'd send some Mr.

 29:36
 ES up and they would distribute those into the lakes are in community and everybody gathered around the fire and eating and someone would come up with a dish that they had created under those conditions.

 29:49
 And you know I don't want to use fond memories, but we Rosa tells me my wife tells me they they got to know their neighbors in a way they wouldn't have under any other circumstances.

 30:01
 Yeah, it brought the communities together.

 30:03
 You're so correct.

 30:04
 It's funny you got to know I can tell you the same exact scenario happened in in my neighborhood there there were people that would do you need this?

 30:12
 Do you need that?

 30:13
 I mean, people were, you know, just helping each other out.

 30:16
 And there were some in our neighborhood that didn't get flooded and but, but, but many of us did.

 30:22
 There was an apartment complex between me and the beach and that apartment complex just was totally destroyed.

 30:29
 And all of the wood from that depart apartment complex was surrounding my house.

 30:35
 And the, the neighbor I was telling you about with the tractor, he came over there and worked.

 30:39
 I mean, that guy, he was such a, he was such a dream.

 30:43
 Pushed all that stuff out of the way of my house so we could get in and out and, you know, no problem.

 30:48
 And and that's just the kind of the kind of folks that that we had, at least in our part of the world that really helped and really got to work.

 30:55
 I mean, you, you can't you, you can't stop.

 30:57
 You have to, you have to go to work.

 31:00
 You have to get your life back straight.

 31:02
 And the sooner you go to work and get everything going, the quicker your life is going to get back to normal.

 31:06
 And that was one of the critical after the communications and we were able to establish became very apparent that apparent that survival.

 31:15
 We were literally concerned with starvation, Disease Control.

 31:19
 I can remember in Pearlington when I visited there and saw, you know, community that depended on on septic tanks, but they're a little small sewer system had ruptured.

 31:30
 I was worried about a cholera outrate because everybody is sleeping on the saturated ground.

 31:35
 And, and, and so, you know, talking about subsistence though there was 1.2 million Mr.

 31:42
 ES distributed over 1,000,000 gallons of water, £2,000,000 of of ice.

 31:50
 These were the sort of things that that came directly from the response from military and FEMA and all the emergency response organizations that had those plans in place.

 32:01
 I'll tell you something real quickly.

 32:02
 The one thing I remember about this was Friday night prior to Monday I was in Biloxi broadcasting the Hattiesburg Biloxi football game and Biloxi was dedicating a new stadium.

 32:14
 They called it their casino stadium cause casino money had built it.

 32:18
 It had suites.

 32:19
 It was the nicest high school stadium ever been in and no one mentioned what are you going to do about the hurricane?

 32:24
 They were telling me where to get the best pole board on the coast.

 32:26
 What Friday night before I I guess people just didn't expect it to the last minute.

 32:32
 I love this conversation we're having because it brings back some good and not so good memories.

 32:36
 But one of the talking about football, the the Army band was assigned to my command periodically during the course of this and Bay Saint Louis was wanting to play football and bring the the community, you know, and prove their morale and everybody.

 32:54
 So they went to see what it was going to take to have a football game.

 32:58
 Just remember this first part of September after the storm and their their band haul had been destroyed.

 33:04
 The field wasn't bad.

 33:05
 So we we assisted and the leader of the band or the army went and talked to the band leader and they came up with a plan.

 33:16
 The military band learned the fight song of Bay High and they played that fight song when that team came on the field that night, that Friday night after the after the storm.

 33:27
 And I'm telling you, there was not a dry eye either side of that field, either side of that field.

 33:33
 It was a really moving and emotional, you know, football in South Mississippi in particular, you know, that means we sit on its own much less in those conditions.

 33:41
 It's great to get back into the swing of things and that probably made people feel a lot better.

 33:46
 General, Gene has got a question for you.

 33:49
 Gene, go ahead.

 33:50
 Like General, one of the concerns I have is what do we learn from these events?

 33:55
 I know after every event we do a self-assessment on them.

 34:00
 The the good points, the preparation, the response, the response technique, what you thought you were prioritizing versus what you should have prioritized.

 34:12
 Is there any reflection you have about what you did versus what you could have done?

 34:17
 Are you pleased with what you did?

 34:19
 What a great question and I think you need to break that question down.

 34:22
 In my mind, I break it down and, and I talked about from an individual level, it goes back to that word resiliency.

 34:29
 And I, I would like to see a movement not only at the individual level where these informal agreements between community and community officials, civic leaders and the individuals, what, what is it I need to do from a personal level?

 34:46
 And I talked about that to be able to survive for 96 hours on your own, whatever that is, water and and foods and so forth and shelter.

 34:55
 But from a community level, what what is a resilient community?

 35:00
 Does it mean simple things like underground utilities to where utility lines are not ruptured in a way that it interferes with the well-being of the community?

 35:09
 Is it the transportation and those transportation routes?

 35:13
 You guys remember Hwy.

 35:15
 90 was a series of concrete pads that were pushed up and, and sunk and destroyed bridges were gone and so forth.

 35:24
 So it, it goes back to taking lessons learned.

 35:26
 This is my opinion taking lessons learned incorporated in a in a community plan that everybody understands their responsibilities from the individual level to the organization, which includes the municipalities and and and their governances.

 35:42
 That that and within those municipalities, you know, in other words, cities have responsibilities for sustainment and resiliency for so many hours.

 35:52
 And we can reach that level.

 35:54
 There's a comfort that we can, you know, withstand any kind of man made or natural disaster.

 36:01
 And and I don't say better for it, but better prepared for sure.

 36:06
 Yeah, General was your was your responsibility and oversight covering any of the New Orleans area as well?

 36:14
 Well, we're in coordination only and you know, I, I was telling Jane during the break that, you know, we had a, we were prepared for a small hurricane and got a large one and and Louisiana got a large hurricane and a flood.

 36:27
 And there's a whole different set of circumstances when you have community saturated in 810 foot of water for two weeks or more.

 36:36
 And the after effects of that, you know, just not being able to get the people in on in and you know, that are trapped on top of roofs and that sort of thing.

 36:44
 So there was a different event over there.

 36:47
 We were in close coordination because of what they call the E Mac agreements, which is Emergency Management agreement compacts between states.

 36:57
 So there was a great deal of coordination taking place and Northcom was involved with the moving these Mr.

 37:05
 as thousands of tons of Mr.

 37:07
 ES and ice and water and some of it was being directed and redirected different places.

 37:13
 So it was a coordination effort and basically anything we can do to help and they were the same.

 37:19
 So go ahead, Jane.

 37:21
 Yeah, General did the one of the things I find so interesting is that sometimes in these emergencies, these declared emergencies, I know what the county would do as a county commissioner, we we kind of loosen our grip on certain things to allow more flexibility in the immediacy of the response.

 37:41
 In terms of the immediacy of your response on the military side, were you open or could you have been open to three or four guys sitting on the porch anxious to do something to help, didn't know who to talk to, what to do?

 37:58
 Could you mobilize as the military citizens on the porch to come in and work at your side, or did they did you have some sort of assigned tasks for citizens next to the military?

 38:13
 Well, you know, from from the military side, I was pretty sensitive to we had some specialized equipment and skills and training that is hard for the average citizen just unless they've been there, done that to to kind of jump in formation and help.

 38:28
 So what we would do is try to direct that through the emergency response centers.

 38:33
 You have one in your county.

 38:35
 Do you have a plan?

 38:37
 You know where it's, you're going to set it up and who's going to be.

 38:40
 So what I would do is send a small cell of five soldiers, usually a, a field grade officer to go in and be liaison to coordinate help and and assist in any of the emergency responses that were being coordinated at the at the local level.

 38:59
 Any, any responses is always great.

 39:01
 You appreciate it.

 39:02
 But you know, one of the problems we saw during Katrina is the response of people coming in, a group of people just coming in and nobody knew where they were supposed to go, what they were supposed to do.

 39:13
 They've come up with, and I took some of the classes that the training classes to how this is actually supposed to work, who you report to, what you know, you come self-sufficient.

 39:22
 If you come into a disaster area, you come self-sufficient.

 39:25
 You've got enough food, water, what have you sleeping, the capability for all the people that you bring to to do that.

 39:32
 And so a lot of times people think they're helping general and Gene, you can you can talk about this as well, when in fact, they're kind of just getting in the way.

 39:43
 Well, you know, there's and, and I've observed since then, there's like the Cajun Navy is an offspring of some of these emergencies and there's these Christian groups that have gotten very organized and very capable and kind of plug and play with some of this emergency response that we didn't have during the Katrina days.

 40:05
 I think it's a result of that Samaritan Purse I think is another one that Billy Graham group does.

 40:14
 These are well organized that plan all year long for these events and are are.

 40:20
 You know, they're very responded first of all, and, and they're very capable of helping.

 40:26
 Again, I, I just emphasized that it has to be a coordinated effort and it has to be communicated real well.

 40:32
 And that is a task in itself.

 40:34
 That's no small task in itself is to ensure that the lines of communications are set.

 40:39
 Everybody understands the priority because Michael and Jane, you you can probably attest what's an emergency to me is not it may not be an emergency to you.

 40:48
 Did you find this?

 40:51
 Yeah, I lost.

 40:52
 I lost my Coke 0.

 40:53
 That's an emergency.

 40:54
 Yeah.

 40:58
 So, so one of the things that that we have learned from Katrina, I guess from listening to you guys, is that somebody a has to be in charge.

 41:07
 There has to be a center of operations where you have people that are delegating the things, the different, you know, like the groups that come in.

 41:17
 Where can you go help?

 41:18
 What would you, would you agree with that?

 41:20
 That's kind of how that's kind of something we learned.

 41:22
 Well put.

 41:23
 Leave your, leave your, you go, you know, leave that back where you came from when you come.

 41:28
 You know, I, I call, I use the term jump in formation, but you know, that's what the formation's about.

 41:34
 Literally, you know, you fall in formation and take instructions and then, you know, you're you're evaluated on how well you follow those instructions.

 41:43
 And you know, it's a big task for an Emergency Management center with all of the not only individual desires, but collective desires that are brought to the table there.

 41:54
 Well, we need this and we need that.

 41:56
 Who sets those priorities And then honoring those decisions of those, whether you like it or not.

 42:02
 That's right.

 42:03
 Yeah.

 42:03
 You know, it, it, it is, it is kind of hard sometimes you've you've got typical folks that come in.

 42:10
 Some of them are natural born leaders.

 42:12
 They want to get involved, but you've got to have a structure and you've got to have a, a way.

 42:18
 And, and I've learned this during Katrina and I think a lot of other folks did as well, that you, you must get a group together that that has a, you call it headquarters, whatever you want to call it.

 42:30
 And that's where that's where everything has to come from.

 42:33
 That's where meetings have, that's where all the folks get together.

 42:35
 Talk about, well, you know, what they saw yesterday, last night, all of those things so that they can put the appropriate response in the appropriate places.

 42:45
 Exactly.

 42:46
 Yeah, complacency was probably the costliest part of the disaster.

 42:52
 It's not optional.

 42:53
 You, you must be prepared.

 42:55
 The general said 9296 hours when we were when I was commissioner over here in Escambia, we used to say the 1st 72 is on you and the general's right.

 43:07
 It's probably 4 days now that's you better have you, you better have preparation for not because of any negligence on the part of the response folks, but just sometimes the magnitude of these things makes it so difficult for response to reach the, the back hills of of a given community.

 43:28
 You know, one of the things I would like to point out, all of us who experienced this, many of us were in leadership positions when Hurricane Katrina came through.

 43:39
 We've got a lot of experience with this general, we've got less than 45 seconds left.

 43:46
 Are there new people coming up that will be able to handle these things that don't have the experience?

 43:51
 I mean, we did it.

 43:53
 But but but are they teaching this?

 43:56
 Oh, absolutely.

 43:57
 And and, you know, there's other threats that scare me probably worse than some hurricanes.

 44:02
 You know, you think about that.

 44:03
 There's been there's been enough world events here lately to concern.

 44:10
 I spent a lot of time in the Middle East and spent time in Israel and spent time certainly in some of those great vacation spots of the Middle East like Afghanistan, Djibouti and different ones.

 44:21
 But you know, again, I, I, I go back to the basics every time I and it's my starts with my Christian faith and and you know, I, I, I really believe there's still maybe enough testosterone in this world and in particularly in our in our, in our leadership organizations that will handle these things.

 44:44
 All right, General Larry Harrington, Jean Valentino, Ted Tibbett, Michael Paul here.

 44:49
 Thank you so much for joining us this morning.

 44:51
 Remember today, if you can't do great things, do small things in a great way.

 44:54
 We'll see you guys later.

 44:55
 Thanks.

 44:56
 Enjoy it paid for by Christian care ministry.

 44:58
 You know, a lot of times you have to choose between something high quality or something.

 45:03
 That's.

 45:03
 Hey, that was great.

 45:04
 That was great.

 45:05
 Gene, you got some good questions in there.

 45:06
 I I I appreciate that.

 45:08
 Well, I hope you.

 45:09
 I hope it was helpful.

 45:10
 Yeah.

 45:11
 No, this was great, man.

 45:12
 This is a, you know, this is the anniversary.

 45:14
 20 years ago.

 45:15
 We were a lot younger.

 45:17
 Smart thing to highlight it.

 45:18
 Very good of you.

 45:19
 Hey, thank you for joining me.

 45:20
 I appreciate it.

 45:21
 Yeah.

 45:21
 My best to everybody.

 45:22
 All right, bye.

 45:23
 Bye.

 45:23
 Bye.