Editor's note: There are times when a family crisis pushes aside all other priorities. This was the case for Scott and Ellie Williams, staff members at FamilyLife who watched with anxiety as Hurricane Katrina swept through the Gulf Coast where they grew up. In the following report (presented in three parts), Scott describes the journey he took to southern Mississippi to help their family begin the process of rebuilding their lives.

Part One: A Landscape of Unfathomable Destruction

When the National Hurricane Center forecasters projected that Hurricane Katrina was heading straight for friends and family in New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast, I began to take notice. My wife, Ellie, and I both experienced first hand major hurricanes when we were first graders. I remembered my own experience in 1965 when my family rode out Hurricane Betsy's 105 mph winds in New Orleans. To a first-grader, hearing the crash of shattering windows, the abrupt crack of tree-trunks and low evil moan of tornado-force winds is threatening beyond description. Four years later, my wife's family rode out Hurricane Camille and her 155 mph winds in their beachfront home in Bay St. Louis, Miss.

Now, with Katrina's imminent arrival, we called to check with everyone on how the preparations were progressing. Had they boarded up, packed up and gassed up? Were they even leaving?

It gave us at least a bit of relief to hear that Ellie's parents were leaving their home on North Beach Boulevard that had been a tenuous refuge during the fury of Camille. But they were only traveling a few miles inland to stay with Ellie's sister, Dayle, and her family on the back side of the Bay of St. Louis. Another of Ellie's sisters, Cecilia, lived in the low-lying town of Waveland, but would also be riding out the storm at a friend's house on the back side of the Bay. At least that area was 30-plus feet above sea level. Other members of Ellie's family in and around New Orleans were also making final preparations for hunkering in or moving out. None of them were planning on sheltering more than a couple of miles inland from the Gulf of Mexico, Lake Pontchartrain, or the Bay of St. Louis.

On the day Katrina reached land, we searched every source—television, radio, the Internet—for word of the storm's impact on the coastline and its residents. As news began to trickle in, we got the sense that things were much worse than anyone anticipated, especially on the Mississippi Coast. Early reports from Biloxi detailed catastrophic wind damage and a storm surge of more than 20 feet. If it was that bad there, what must it have been like 30 miles westward in Bay St. Louis, at the brunt of the storm's impact?

Was everyone in the family okay? Did their homes make it? It became hard to think of anything else.

Thankfully, it wasn't long before we were getting word from family members. We knew Cecilia would be first to check in because she had access to a satellite phone. She relayed word that she had heard from Dayle that everyone was okay at her house and that damage was minimal. But as the next few days passed, and we began to see the widespread destruction in aerial footage taken by helicopters of the area, our hearts sank. Sure, everyone was safe, but was there going to be anything for them to return to?

Eventually we learned that Ellie's family home was damaged and had several tons of sand filling the basement, but it still stood. But the news was not so good for Cecilia's house and for the plumbing supply store owned by her father, Harold Battalora. Both were destroyed.

Amazed at the Damage

I became determined to get down there and help in whatever way I could. There would be much to do to help the family begin to get back on its feet. We got word out to friends here at FamilyLife, who helped us put together supplies for the relief effort: food, water, generator, lumber, tools … and enough gasoline to make the 1,000-mile round trip and to power the generator for a week.

In 12 hours, we had gathered the supplies and I hit the road for a long trip. In Hattiesburg, Miss., I picked up our oldest son, Brian, who ridden out Katrina on campus at the University of Southern Mississippi. The school was closed for another week as the city cleaned up after the storm, so Brian was ready to get out of his dorm and help in whatever way he could.

The closer we got to the coast, the more amazed we were at the damage. Massive highway billboards, long since stripped of their messages, were bent in half. Tall pine trees were stripped, uprooted, twisted or bent to the ground. We could tell that the storm surge (the largest ever recorded in the U.S.) had swept across Interstate 10, fully five miles inland from the beach. As we turned off the interstate and headed toward the bay on Mississippi Highway 603, cars were strewn by the dozens along highway shoulders—some moved by the storm surge, others by wreckers and bulldozers trying the make the roads passable. Intermingled with them were sailboats, fishing boats, and yachts.

By the time we made it into Bay St. Louis, the familiar landmarks that had welcomed me for the past 25 years of travel to the area were ghostly shells of themselves. Approaching the Bay St. Louis bridge, it was obvious from the debris of personal belongings that horrific winds and the massive storm surge had decimated the coastline. And all that remained of the bridge were pilings—the entire roadway had been picked up and dropped in the bay, section by section.

"That is Some Tough House"

Normally, to reach the home of Ellie's parents we would have driven a quarter mile along the North Beach Boulevard Historic District and pulled into their driveway. But now Beach Boulevard was a beach. And most of the picturesque homes that had been there were gone, swept away into a pile of rubble, leaving only foundations.

The Breath House, built in 1820 and the third oldest home on the Mississippi Coast…gone. All that remained was a large yellow ribbon tied around the 150-year-old oak in their front yard, carrying a sign that said "The Breaths."

The Ramsey house next door…gone.

The Santa Cruz home, where one of Ellie's best grade school friends lived…gone.

The Whitfield home next door…still standing, but its forward pilings were washed out, leaving the front half of the house listing at a sharp angle toward the beach.

The Battalora home, MS, where Ellie grew up, on North Beach Boulevard in Bay St. Louis. The house, which also took a direct hit from Hurricane Camille in 1969, was one of only a handful of houses on the beach still habitable after the storm. The growing pile of rubble in the foreground is mostly from the basement, which saw some 2-3 of water from Katrina's storm surge. The basement elevation is about 26 feet above sea level. (Photo Credit: Brian Williams)

Then, the Battalora house, Ellie's childhood home. The beach, once a hundred yards away, had moved up into their side yard, and their ancient oaks and magnolias lay twisted and fallen to the ground. The yard was piled with debris, including a railroad tie from the bridge which once stood at least half a mile away, and dozens of planks from the demolished city pier.

But the building was remarkably spared, looking much as it had the first time I drove up to visit Ellie when we began dating in 1980…the way it had during the reception on our wedding day in 1985…and the way it had a few months earlier when Ellie and I pulled out of the driveway with our van full of kids. There was some visible damage, but compared to what I had already seen, it was nothing.

"That is some tough house," I thought to myself. It had survived a point-blank shot from Camille 36 years earlier, and now it had stood through Katrina. Good construction, good elevation, a lot of trees to break the wind, and most of all, the Grace of God had once again protected the home.

When we opened the foyer door for the first time, we were greeted with an inhospitable dose of reality—a thick smell with all the pungency of a stagnant ditch covered with a blanket of heavy mold. Instead of stepping onto the homey slate floor amid the subtle décor of the entrance area, we were faced with an inch of grayish brown mud the consistency of chocolate pudding and a hideous high water line of flotsam residue about two feet up the sheetrock.

The foyer had always been the place Ellie's mom expected everyone to take off their shoes so that no speck of sand made it up to the immaculate and well-appointed living quarters on the second floor. Old habits are hard to break, so I shed my shoes and walked up the steps to find a surreal scene—everything on this level looked just as if Ellie's mother had spent the whole day cleaning to get ready for company.

That stark contrast set the tone for the rest of the week there—a backdrop of constancy and order against the vast landscape of unfathomable destruction and personal tragedy we found outside. For Brian and me, the living quarters would become a refuge from the toil and turmoil of working in some of the most unpleasant surroundings I have ever experienced.

Read the rest of the story...

Part Two: Working All Day in a Slimy Muck

Part Three: The First Steps to Rebuilding