Twenty years after Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast, the stories of loss, resilience, and unexpected recovery continue to ripple through communities from Louisiana to Mississippi. As the nation marks the storm’s somber anniversary, new discoveries and reflections shed light not only on what was lost, but also on the enduring human (and animal) bonds that disasters lay bare.
On a breezy March day in 2023, Gulf Islands National Seashore Park Ranger Becky Copeland was doing what she does best—scouring the sugar-white sands of Horn Island, Mississippi, for signs of nesting Snowy Plovers. Instead, she stumbled upon a piece of hard plastic, half-buried about 25 yards from the water. At first glance, it looked like just another bit of beach debris. But as Copeland brushed away the sand, she realized she was holding a relic: a battered student ID from John Carroll High School in Birmingham, Alabama, dated 1969–1970.
“I can tell this is a student ID. I can see that there was once a photo right there,” Copeland recalled in an interview with NPR. The name and date of birth were illegible, but the artifact was clearly over 50 years old and a long way from home—about 249 miles, to be exact. For Copeland, who has found everything from beautiful shells to messages in bottles during her tenure, this find was different. “Nobody goes to Horn Island, nobody goes to the beach with their student ID from 50 years ago in their pocket and just happens to lose it on the beach,” she mused. “If this still existed to this day, somebody was trying to keep it safe.”
The ID sat on her shelf for over two years, its story a mystery—until a few weeks ago. The sun had faded the card, revealing previously hidden details. Suddenly, the name was clear as day: Catherine Hamel. Armed with this clue, Copeland tracked down a John Carroll High School alumni page on Facebook, and within an hour, she had her answer. The card belonged to Cathy Hamel, a 69-year-old woman who had lost everything in Hurricane Katrina nearly two decades earlier.
“It was in a little metal box in the house so I’m assuming that little metal box had floated all the way out to Horn Island,” Hamel told NPR, marveling at the card’s journey. “It was such a shock to wrap my head around. It’s been out there all that time.”
Back in August 2005, Hamel lived less than a block from the water in Bay Saint Louis, Mississippi. As Katrina bore down, she decided at the last minute to evacuate, taking only insurance papers and two photo albums—one with pictures of her house, the other of her ancestors. She left everything else, including her student ID, behind. When she returned after the storm, her home was reduced to a concrete slab and a porch swing hanging in an oak tree. “People always kept saying, ‘Well, it’s just material stuff, and you can rebuild and you can do all that’ and yeah, I get it, but I lost everything that was a memento of the first 50 years of my life,” she said. “It was just swept away.”
Hamel’s story is just one among thousands that Katrina scattered across the Gulf Coast. The storm, which made landfall on August 29, 2005, near Buras, Louisiana, left a trail of destruction that photographer Richard Misrach would later describe as “like a movie set for the end of the world.” According to The New York Times, Misrach and his wife Myriam drove their Volkswagen camper from California to document the aftermath, navigating streets littered with nails and broken glass. “If people were there, I would have photographed them,” Misrach said. “But people weren’t. They had fled to Houston; to Shreveport, La.; to Atlanta; they were huddled in toxic evacuation camps; they were missing; they were dead.”
Misrach’s photographs captured the haunting absence of life: abandoned homes, upended cars, and the detritus of lives interrupted. The devastation he chronicled was not only the result of the storm itself, but also, as historian Andy Horowitz has argued, the product of decades of systemic neglect and shortsighted decisions. Katrina, in this telling, was as much a man-made disaster as a natural one—a point driven home by the slow, painful recovery that followed.
Yet, amid the ruin, Katrina also forced a reckoning with how communities care for their most vulnerable—both human and animal. In the chaotic days after the storm, tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of pets were left behind as residents evacuated. “The messaging back then was: Just evacuate, leave your pets behind,” Randy Covey, an animal rescue manager who spent weeks in New Orleans post-Katrina, told NPR. Rescue workers and shelters often refused to allow pets, leaving many owners with an impossible choice.
One such owner was Nita Hemeter, who snuck past roadblocks to rescue her dog and cat. “I knew there were animals all over that needed help because you could hear them hollering,” she recalled. The scale of the animal welfare crisis was unprecedented. The Lamar-Dixon Expo Center, about 60 miles west of New Orleans, became the largest animal rescue shelter operation in U.S. history, but even that couldn’t keep up with the need. “There weren’t enough people to provide care, there wasn’t enough space, so the animals would just be going from one bad situation to another,” Covey said.
For many, the bond with their pets proved stronger than the warnings to evacuate. A poll by the Fritz Institute found that nearly half of the 150,000 to 200,000 people who stayed behind during Katrina did so because of their pets. “It became evident during Hurricane Katrina, when asked to choose between abandoning their pets or their own personal safety, many pet owners chose to risk their lives and remain with their pets, and some of them perished,” former Congressman Christopher Shays said during the 2006 passage of the Pet Evacuation & Transportation Safety (PETS) Act. The law now requires disaster planning to include pets—a change that animal advocates like Ana Zorrilla, CEO of the Louisiana SPCA, call a “silver lining” to Katrina’s tragedy.
Today, emergency responders and animal welfare groups urge residents to take their pets with them when disaster strikes. “The messaging has changed: If you evacuate, take your pets with you,” Covey emphasized. Yet, as recent wildfires in California have shown, challenges remain in ensuring animals’ safety after human evacuation.
As the 20th anniversary of Katrina passes, the Gulf Coast is still reckoning with the storm’s legacy. For survivors like Cathy Hamel, the return of a lost high school ID is more than a quirky footnote—it’s a tangible link to a life swept away, and a reminder of the community’s enduring spirit. Katrina took much, but in unexpected ways, it also gave back.
