Doug Niolet was a seasoned Hurricane Hunter for the Air Force Reserve. So of course, when Hurricane Katrina approached the Gulf Coast ten years ago, he had no plans to evacuate.
“My daughter calls and I say ‘Hello, Courtney? Wow! Look at that roof that just blew off that building,’" he says. "My daughter screams at the top of her lungs, she says ‘Daddy! What are you doing in Bay St. Louis.’ I said ‘Courtney, I don’t have time to talk about this right now.’”
Doug had a harrowing experience during Katrina. After the building he was in started to collapse, he and four other people found refuge in an oak tree - holding on for dear life. while the 30-foot storm surge pounded the small Gulf town. But Doug survived. And despite being among the hardest hit areas, his little town in Mississippi survived too.
“We just love Bay St. Louis, Bay St. Louis is a cool little town to be in and, you know, it’s coming back. It’s as cool as it used to be, but in a different way,” says Doug's wife Vicki. They own several businesses in Bay St. Louis, including the antiques mall where I found them both today. And she’s right. Ten years later, the town is doing well. People are moving back, new businesses are opening and new developments are going up on the empty lots Katrina left behind. One way you can tell? It’s the second Saturday of the month.
“Second Saturday...it’s the Downtown Merchants association. All the merchants in this little area - in Oldtown Bay St.Louis - hold an art walk,”says Mark Courier, who co-owns Gallery 220 with his wife Jenice. They the first business to reopen after the Storm.
"We wanted to do something for all the people - all the volunteers and military - so we started doing Second Saturday every Saturday,” he says.
By the time Katrina hit, Second Saturday was a ten-year-old tradition. Everyone comes out for the free live music, art galleries and antique shops serve up food and drinks. For this small town with a vibrant arts community, Second Saturday was always a big deal. It became an even bigger deal after the storm.
Vicki Niolet remembers the first Second Saturday following Katrina: "We just stood in one of the buildings and had a beer and turned my car radio on and - it was kind of sad but it was still symbolic. Second Saturday never stopped.”
Vicki shows me a picture of her and 11 others standing in the wreckage of a nearby building.
“We just stood right there at the corner of where the hub of activity used to be, and even though the road in front of it was pretty much gone, we pretty much just stood in the open building and had our little second saturday," she says. "Little private party.”
I know I was a more grateful, sharing person after that.
But now it’s one big public party. Everyone coming together to share in the reviving of their community. And they’re reminded of how the storm not only changed the town, but the people. Anne Tidwell, Vicki’s mother, says in the days after the storm, when people like her were just trying to survive, it was the help from her neighbors that meant the most.
“I know I was a more grateful, sharing person after that," she says. "Anything I had, people could have it. I’d share. I really would.”
This story was produced by Travis Lux, Wallis Watkins and Ann Marie Awad as part of the 24-hour radio race from KCRW’s Independent Producer Project.