KILN – In the days leading up to the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, Hancock County emergency director Brian “Hooty” Adam recalled an eerie moment, one he fully recognizes sounds made up.
Trudging through a pile of debris in the woods, Adam stumbled upon an opened book. Staring up at him, he said, were pages from the Book of Genesis telling the story of Noah’s Ark, in which God forewarns of a catastrophic flood.
“If I hadn’t witnessed it, people would probably have never believed it,” said Adam, who took over as director two years before Katrina flooded his county with a nearly 30-foot storm surge.
In 2005, he rode out the storm of biblical proportions in the county’s old emergency office, a defunct bowling alley near the shore in Bay St. Louis. Adam, sporting a full mustache and a red polo, now works in a state-of-the-art, bunkered operations center in Kiln, about 10 miles north.
Brian Adam is director of Hancock County Emergency Management, based in Kiln, Monday, Aug. 18, 2025. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi TodayProudly walking through the new stronghold, he explained the progress Hancock County and the rest of the Mississippi Gulf Coast made over the last 20 years, such as adopting modern building codes, updating their emergency plans and elevating construction in flood prone areas.
But while the Coast is spearheading resilience in Mississippi, it also exemplifies an economic dilemma creeping into all corners of the region and country as a whole.
“The biggest remnant of Katrina that is still causing a disaster is the insurance,” said Rhonda Rhodes, president of the Hancock Resource Center.
Coast life’s rising cost
Vandy Mitchell, a retired state employee in Biloxi, said he could throw a dart at the city’s map and find someone with home insurance problems, whether they’re worried about their policy being renewed or their premiums skyrocketing.
Katrina was a major turning point in the insurance market. Before the storm, Mitchell said the premium for his 1,400-square-foot home was about $900 a year. Now, he said, he pays $4,200 a year, a 360% increase over 20 years. That’s more than he pays for the mortgage on his house, Mitchell added.
“That’s not the way it’s supposed to work,” he said. “It’s getting harder and harder to justify living in this area.”
Pylons for new home construction in the Jourdan River area, west of the Bay of St. Louis, Monday, Aug. 18, 2025 in Bay St. Louis. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi TodayHome insurance is the primary way homeowners can secure their shelters and belongings in case of a natural disaster. Those with little or no insurance have to rely on donations or hope the disaster is large enough to secure a federal declaration, something that is difficult in small, rural areas such as those throughout Mississippi.
Even if a declaration does come, the Federal Emergency Management Agency as of 2023 capped housing assistance payments at $42,500 – far below most homes’ value. Moreover, as The Associated Press reported, the government is taking longer than before to issue declarations, extending the limbo for uninsured storm victims.
In Mississippi, nearly a quarter of homeowners pay less than $100 a year in home insurance, which, as experts told NBC News last year, means they have such scant coverage they’re essentially uninsured. Only two states, West Virginia and New Mexico, had a higher percentage.
Within Mississippi, though, several counties have much higher rates. In Jefferson County, where more than 1 in 4 lives below the poverty line, 48% of homeowners lack meaningful insurance.
Across the country in places with increasing disaster risk, insurance companies are both hiking premiums and pulling out altogether. David Krenning, an insurance agent in Ocean Springs, said large carriers such as Allstate and Progressive have stopped writing wind and hail policies on the Coast in Mississippi.
Coast residents often are left with policies from either the “wind pool” – a state-funded program – or an “unadmitted carrier.” The Mississippi Insurance Department allows unadmitted, or unregulated, carriers to work in the state to bridge the gap left by larger companies. But those options come with higher costs for the homeowner and less regulation by the state.
Living on the Coast, Krenning said, is becoming tougher for blue-collar families who have been there for years. He said it’s common to see houses for $250,000 – just over the area’s median value – to have $5,000-$6,000 annual premiums just for wind and hail policies.
“It’s tough for folks who lived here their entire life, they paid off their home,” said Krenning, who grew up around his family’s insurance business. “For a long time, people were coming here because the cost of living was so cheap. But the continually rising insurance costs could really hinder some areas of the Coast.”
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“We have apartment complexes that were built after Katrina, and they’re having issues because they have capital improvement needs.” Rhodes said. “But they can’t keep the housing affordable and make those improvements with the cost of insurance looming over their head.
“The frustrating thing is, it’s been 20 years (since Katrina), and we’re still paying for insurance like it was last year.”
Couches on blocks
After hurricanes Zeta and Ida – in 2020 and 2021, respectively – Jackson County received about $18 million in federal disaster grants, and is now developing what officials there say is the state’s first resilience plan. Part of the plan includes improving drainage in the low-lying, flood-prone city of Moss Point.
Moss Point Mayor Billy Knight said flooding has become so common in the city that during a heavy rain, residents elevate couches and beds inside their homes onto blocks to keep them dry.
“It’s just become a normal thing,” he said.
Like other parts of the Coast, Moss Point sits in a swampy, wet ecosystem, and early developers didn’t always consider drainage when planning new housing, Knight said. Now, increasing rainfall is overwhelming the city’s aging stormwater system.
Most of East Moss Point sits in a “high-risk” flood zone, which means mortgage lenders require homeowners there to have flood insurance. Residents in the city pay on average about $1,300 a year in flood insurance premiums and fees, federal data show.
But East Moss Point, where the median household income is $26,000, is also the poorest part of the city. Many of the city’s low-income families settled there, Knight explained, because that’s where the cheapest property is.
“People have to go to where they can afford,” Knight said. “Sometimes they don’t realize why the houses are not as much as on the other side of town. They’re cheaper because you’re in a flood zone.”
Hancock County Emergency Management Director Brian Adam, uses a map to show how the many waterways, from rivers to bayous, plus the Gulf of Mexico, can contribute to flooding in Kiln and surrounding communities, Monday, Aug. 18, 2025, at emergency management headquarters in Kiln. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today‘Long overdue’ solutions
Insurance experts agree that as climate volatility continues to trend upward, the cost of protecting disaster-prone homes will only grow.
“It’s really strange to say, but the insurance industry was one of the first industries talking about the impact of climate change,” said Chip Merlin, an attorney who specializes in insurance claims and who worked with Katrina survivors in Mississippi. “If you go back 20, 30 years ago, it was some of the largest multinational insurance companies saying, this is going to be a problem, and it seems to be getting worse.”
Those on the Coast, such as Krenning and Rhodes, fear rising premiums are already pushing lower- and middle-income families away from what used to be blue-collar communities.
In Alabama and Louisiana, lawmakers fund incentives encouraging homeowners to mitigate their roofs using “FORTIFIED” standards, a program through the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety. The grants provide up to $10,000 per house.
A study this year by the University of Alabama found, during Hurricane Sally in 2020, FORTIFIED homeowners in the state filed fewer than half as many claims as everyone else. Upgrading the roofs for every home, the research said, would have slashed total damage costs by about two-thirds.
Homes in the Jourdan River area, west of the Bay of St. Louis, are elevated to keep flood waters out, Monday, Aug. 18, 2025 in Bay St. Louis. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi TodayPolicy and planning experts point to mitigation grants and statewide, uniform building codes as key avenues towards climate resilience at the local level. Mississippi lacks both.
“The only way we’re going to lower (insurance) rates on the Gulf Coast is through mitigation, building a stronger home,” said Mississippi Insurance Commissioner Mike Chaney.
Mitchell, the Biloxi resident, said he would love to upgrade his roof, especially if it means chopping down his insurance bill. But doing so costs thousands of dollars – close to $20,000 for a 2,000 square-foot home, according to Habitat for Humanity. It’s so expensive that he joked it’d almost be easier if a storm came and blew his roof off for him.
“I think we’re long overdue for that in Mississippi,” Krenning said of a state-funded mitigation grant.
The beach in Waveland on Aug. 18, 2025. Credit: Alex Rozier, Mississippi TodayRhodes, whose nonprofit has worked to improve housing in Hancock County since Katrina, said outside of insurance issues, the Hancock County community has “bounced back beautifully.” Waveland was decimated by the hurricane and is finally starting to see new development arrive, she said, although businesses there now have to navigate costs to elevate their buildings.
“They’re going to get there, it’s just a little slower,” Rhodes said. “The people who live here, the ones who were here during Katrina, it’s enough of a memory in their mind now that we can appreciate all the good that’s come from it. I do think the people’s spirit and attitude is resilient.”
Getting ready to retire after 22 years as the Hancock County emergency director, Adam recognized not everyone wants to relive the horrifying events of Hurricane Katrina that took 238 lives in Mississippi. But for him, he said, it’s a duty to impart whatever knowledge will help others learn, calling those lessons a “blessing in tragedy.”
“Here’s the thing: People are not going to want change,” Adam said, describing stricter regulations on the Coast. “They didn’t want change when (Katrina) happened. But it’s inevitable. As long as I’ve been in this, if I don’t change and I don’t learn, I shouldn’t be in this job.”
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