When people think of Hurricane Katrina, the images that come to mind are mostly from New Orleans. Houses flooded to the roof, Coast Guard helicopter baskets filled with people, and evacuees clutching their few possessions outside the Superdome. But there is another story about Hurricane Katrina that’s mostly overlooked: What Hurricane Katrina did to Mississippi. […]
When people think of Hurricane Katrina, the images that come to mind are mostly from New Orleans.
Houses flooded to the roof, Coast Guard helicopter baskets filled with people, and evacuees clutching their few possessions outside the Superdome.
But there is another story about Hurricane Katrina that’s mostly overlooked: What Hurricane Katrina did to Mississippi.
I was in Baton Rouge on the grounds of the Louisiana State Police headquarters, ground zero for the press covering Katrina in New Orleans.
There must have been more than 200 satellite trucks parked there like queen bees waiting for the worker bees — local and national reporters, photogs and producers — to return every evening from New Orleans.
One evening, I sat around talking to the people manning the CBS satellite truck, who told me they had been to the Mississippi coast immediately after Katrina.
They said that from the Gulf Coast to the interstate I-10, everything was flattened, nothing stood over a few feet high. One described it as saying “it looked like everything on the ground had been scrapped up and put in a blender, and then poured back out again.”
Even Hattiesburg, 70 miles north of the Mississippi coast, was devastated by Katrina’s winds of more than 120 mph, destroying homes and businesses.
“Katrina ravished Hattiesburg (barely an hour north of the Gulf) just as badly as other areas that got a lot more press,” says Erik Snell, WDAM’s creative services director.
WDAM is the ABC/NBC affiliate owned by Raycom covering Hattiesburg, Biloxi, Gulfport and Pascagoula.
“Our viewers here have since felt like they were left out and ignored when they needed just as much help.”
With the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina approaching the end of August, some national news networks and many local TV stations in the Gulf Coast region will be airing special programming related to Katrina.
I’d like to share any and all special television coverage here on Market Share. So if your network or local TV station has special coverage or programming planned, please let me know by calling me at 817-578-6324 or e-mailing me at [email protected].
Please be sure and include links to any promotion for the coverage and clips or trailers from the news stories.
WDAM has several specials planned including one for the night of August 28.
“Instead of a simple recap of what happened 10 years ago,” says Snell, “we wanted to work towards getting lots of new content.”
“Our promotion for the special will focus on promoting some of the individual stories we will feature. We’ll be using the ‘here’s what a great story we will have … and we’ll have more just like it’ approach.”
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