Minding Mississippi

Disasters | Volunteers and locals continue the long, slow, and unheralded process of rebuilding after Katrina | Jamie Dean

BILOXI and PASS CHRISTIAN, Miss.—At 81 years old, all Felicia O'Connor wants is "a clean place to sleep and somewhere to make my coffee." For the past four months, Mrs. O'Connor has been sleeping and making coffee in a tiny FEMA travel trailer on a narrow lot behind her small, water-logged home in Biloxi, Miss. Hurricane Katrina filled the one-story house with 6 feet of sea water, destroying everything inside and leaving it uninhabitable.

The trailer is cramped, but Mrs. O'Connor considers herself fortunate: It's much better than the screened-in front porch where she lived for over two months before FEMA delivered the emergency unit. Like many life-long Biloxi residents, Mrs. O'Connor, a widow for 41 years, wanted to stay close to her home after the storm, even if it meant sleeping outside. She has family in other states, but "I couldn't stay away," she told WORLD from the small doorway of her tidy camper.