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Katrina left a lot of pine trees standing, but brown and lifeless. "Eighty to 100 percent of the trees were inundated with storm surge waters from Katrina as much as 12 miles inland and that has posed some serious threats to our public safety," Hancock County Extension Service Director Gwen Smith said. The dead trees are still standing because they don't meet the guidelines for removal. Only trees with broken tops or those leaning at a 30 degree angle can be removed by U.S. Army Corps of Engineer debris crews. County Supervisor David Yarborough says that's left many properties in...

WASHINGTON -- An enduring mystery of the response to Hurricane Katrina is how top federal officials remained unaware for days about the thousands of flood victims stranded at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center without food, water or security. (snip) The chairwoman of the Senate committee investigating the government's response to the storm lay part of the blame at the feet of New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, on Wednesday accused Nagin of failing to alert federal disaster officials that he was steering storm victims away from the chaos and filth at the Superdome to the Convention...

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) - Damage to offshore oil and gas platforms from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita has tripled the number of requests to convert rigs into artificial reefs in the Gulf of Mexico. The Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries usually gets 10 to 12 requests each year to use abandoned rigs to create fish habitat. But that number has soared to 40 requests this year, Rick Kasprzak, program manager of the Louisiana Artificial Reef Program, told The Advocate of Baton Rouge for a story in Monday's editions. Oil and gas platforms in the program are located in federal...

NEW ORLEANS (AP) - Debbie Shifter faces the daunting task of whipping up Thanksgiving dinner for 18 in the tiny kitchen of her FEMA trailer. Shifter, who lives in Bay St. Louis, Miss., had to drive 45 minutes to find a Wal-Mart that survived Hurricane Katrina. Downsizing the ingredients to fit her compact oven, she will serve a 13-pound turkey instead of the usual 20-pounder. Because of a lack of counter space, she will do the chopping and dicing on two wooden TV trays in her living room. Guests will eat outside at a plastic table on her lawn, or...

ERATH, La. (AP) - When the wave of black water descended on this town, the fields of sugarcane were ripe, tall, green shoots bursting with sugar. "This entire field was a lake," recalled Clay DuPlantis, standing in one of the decimated fields his family has farmed for seven generations. Thousands of acres of cane ready to be harvested were soaked in saltwater as Hurricanes Katrina and Rita pounded the Gulf of Mexico 35 miles away. When the sea water receded, much of the cane was damaged and the fields were filled with torn-off porches, picnic tables, splintered furniture and stinking...

BILOXI, Miss. — The beachfront cottage where Jefferson Davis wrote his memoirs stood for a century and a half in the shade of towering oak trees, but Hurricane Katrina reduced it to rubble in just a few hours. Like nearly all historical homes on Mississippi's Gulf Coast, the cottages at Beauvoir were swept away by Katrina's winds and storm surge. "It's a horrifying site," said Todd Sanders, a coordinator with the Mississippi Department of Archives and History. "It's hard for me to put into words." The main house at Beauvoir, built in 1852, survived the storm better than most buildings....

NEW ORLEANS, La. - (KRT) - Bernard Dunklin's pills sit next to a baby stroller. Glenn Dominick's legal papers flutter in the breeze. Susan Devlin's medical records are stuck to a water-damaged photo and an elementary school certificate of achievement for Samantha Devlin. "There's shoes, thousands of coolers, cots, clothes, it's all mixed up now," said Kevin Webb, after he dumped a truckload of garbage from the Superdome in a vacant lot a mile from downtown New Orleans. "There were a lot of people packed to leave, but then they couldn't take their stuff with them. It's all toxic now."...

GULFPORT, Miss. (NNS) -- Naval Construction Battalion Center (NCBC) Gulfport opened its doors Sept. 17 to Kelly, Toni, Jackie and Noah, four of eight Atlantic Bottlenose dolphins displaced when a reported 40-foot storm surge caused by Hurricane Katrina destroyed their home at Marine Life Oceanarium Aug. 29. The dolphins' temporary home includes three portable saltwater above-ground pools, filters, pumps and monitoring equipment set up by U.S. Navy Marine Mammal Program personnel from San Diego at an NCBC facility. One 22,000-gallon pool and two 10,000-gallon pools will be used to provide a temporary home for eight dolphins while they recover from...

JACKSON, Miss. - Two anemic dolphins that were swept from their aquarium tanks into the Gulf of Mexico by Hurricane Katrina were retrieved Thursday, but six others remained at sea. The two retrieved dolphins were captured after scientists in a boat coaxed the trained animals into sliding onto mats. The dolphins had cuts and appeared to be the worst injured of the eight, Jeff Foster, a marine specialist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. They were immediately moved to a hotel swimming pool. Trainers and scientists hope to catch more of the dolphins on Saturday, but said that may...

SEATTLE (AP) - Hurricane Katrina destroyed thousands of homes, but it was the damage to timber and sawmills in the storm-ravaged region that immediately drove up the price of some construction materials nationwide. Now, as the plants reopen and the focus switches to reconstruction, experts say prices should begin to stabilize. In the long term, some say the rebuilding effort will have a minimal effect on construction costs elsewhere in the country - and could possibly even lead to changes that make home building somewhat more affordable. "In terms of somebody buying a house in California, there's going to be...

BEIRUT: Leading Shiite cleric Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah called on Muslims inside and outside the U.S. to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina. Usually a harsh critic of U.S. policies in the region, Fadlallah said that Islam rejected the spirit of gloating and revenge in time of a natural disaster. "We refuse to look at disasters as a godly punishment or a godly wrath. It is not necessary [for disasters] to be separated from nature. They can hit oppressed regions as they hit arrogant regions," he said. "Islam, which exhorted Muslims to befriend the world, to reach understanding with others...

Johnnie Lou Ingram, the zoning administrator at Picayune City Hall, is incensed. A neighbor started burning some of the debris around his home on Sunday and the fire got out of control nearly destroying her house and those of some her neighbors. Pine Grove and Nicholson Volunteer Fire Departments and the Mississippi Forestry Commission had to respond to the fire off Palestine Road near New Palestine Cemetery to bring it under control, she said. The firefighters had to battle the blaze until 11:30 p.m. and the Forestry Commission had to use its plough to contain the fire. Picayune Assistant Fire...

*Images of Americans in need pulls at everyone's hearts* The magnitude of the damage to the U.S. Gulf Coast isn't fully known by federal, state or local leaders in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. Where nature's fury left wrecked lives, homes, cities and small communities, people are more determined than ever to rebuild. Of course repairs to roads, bridges, homes, businesses, sewer and water plants and the environment translates into the need for dollars and cents. The Associated Press reported the final tab for Hurricane Katrina could climb to $200 billion, or as much as four years of the war...

RESTON, Va. - Sprint Nextel Corp. Wednesday said Hurricane Katrina would cost the company $150 million to $200 million. The estimate includes the cost of restoring its network, as well as billing relief to customers in the affected regions, Sprint said. Company spokesman John Taylor said Sprint doesn't have a specific figure for how much it will recoup through insurance. The financial impact is expected to be spread over the rest of the year, the company said. Sprint said it has restored service to 90 percent of the storm-hit areas in Mississippi and 70 percent in Louisiana. No specific numbers...

Some television viewers may have shed a tear with Sen. Trent Lott as the Mississippi Republican surveyed the heap of timber where his Pascagoula shoreline house once stood. But they should have cried for other reasons when President Bush promised Senator Lott "a fantastic new house" in the same place. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, taxpayers are about to be milked again by one of the most foolish federal programs ever created. Federal flood insurance puts taxpayers on the hook for much of the flood damage to houses that have no business being built on flood plains. American taxpayers...

OCEAN SPRINGS, Mississippi (Reuters) - The survivors of Hurricane Katrina, whose bludgeoned houses litter the U.S. Gulf Coast, are gearing up for another epic battle, this time against their insurers. Almost two weeks after the killer storm swept ashore, homeless residents are only now beginning to contact their insurance companies, and they do not like what they hear. The problem is that when Katrina came ashore in Mississippi state, which lies just east of Louisiana and devastated New Orleans, it brought with it a record storm surge that appeared to do much of the damage, leveling entire communities. Initial comments...

GULFPORT - The first meeting of the day in Mississippi Power's impromptu storm center starts at 7 a.m. Friday, it started a little early because Bobby Kerley, vice president of customer service and marketing, saw everybody ready to go. The company's vice president for customer service chaired it and started going around the room. It starts at the nuts and bolts -- the line hardware and transformers that are being gathered from everywhere to complete one of the biggest power restoration projects ever. It was going to be a tight day for transformers, but more were arriving. "Manufacturers are keeping...

Sep. 9 - South Mississippi counties are scrambling to find space for the mountains of garbage left behind by Hurricane Katrina, some of it so compacted that wood can't be separated from asbestos, propane tanks, sewage, rotting meat and hazardous waste. Rough estimates indicate the six hardest-hit counties may produce more than six times the solid waste generated in the entire state in a single year. Those piles of garbage will likely be around for years. "It's more debris than all the debris companies in the world could handle," said Frank Reddish, manager of the bureau of recovery and mitigation...

WASHINGTON - As the world focuses on the life-and-death issues caused by Hurricane Katrina, many of those not directly affected by the tragedy have some basic questions about how the storm will touch their lives. Here's a sampling: Q: Will bus fares rise as a result of higher gasoline prices caused by Hurricane Katrina? A: It depends on the individual contract that each bus system has with its gasoline supplier, said Virginia Miller, a spokeswoman for the American Public Transportation Association. If a system negotiated a fixed price for gas when it was cheaper, it is still paying the per-gallon...

BAYOU LA BATRE, Ala. (ABP)—In Forrest Gump, the hero scores an economic coup when his boat is the only one in the Bayou La Batre, Ala., shrimping fleet to survive a hurricane. Sadly, for the real-life Bayou La Batre, Forrest Gump was fiction. This blue-collar hamlet south of Mobile, where Mobile Bay meets the Gulf of Mexico, may be the place in Alabama hit hardest by Hurricane Katrina, at least economically. The destruction is not nearly as dramatic as in New Orleans and along the Mississippi coast. But it may have crippled the entire town’s way of life, which is...