We’re sitting on the outskirts of Kiln, Miss., next to about a dozen FEMA trailers tucked next to a gas station.
People are pulling up for gas, a few of them in cars still clearly damaged from the storm.
Photographer Kathy Moore and I spent the morning touring a neighborhood near the water in Bay St. Louis where Katrina scrubbed every home entirely clean from its foundation. Homes on pilings were plucked free and are gone. Damaged cars, boats and debris litter every yard.

A few people still live there, mostly in FEMA trailers pulled onto the foundation where their home once stood. Neighbors joke that most people decorate trees with Christmas lights this time of the year, but their trees are still covered with thousands of plastic bags, clothing and other debris from the storm.
Many towns around the nation have a huge Christmas tree in a park or in City Hall.

In Bay St. Louis, a beautifully decorated Christmas tree is strapped to a concrete barrier that prevents motorists from driving on the remains of a storm-ruined bridge to Pass Christian.

After the storm, the area where the tree now stands was a bizarre little oasis of cell phone reception. Beleaguered storm victims heard about it almost immediately, and during the day the flocked there to call loved ones and friends.
Even today, there’s something sort of magical about the place.