Of the dozens of building contractors punished by the state of Mississippi for preying on victims of Hurricane Katrina, one stands out from the crowd of mostly small-time, fly-by-night operators: Call Henry, a Florida-based firm with hundreds of employees that...

Donna Armstrong of Diamondhead may be President Bush's biggest fan in Hancock County, Miss. On Wednesday, she waited for more than an hour in blazing heat for a glimpse of the president's motorcade.

In a ceremony marking the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, elected officials in Hancock County, Miss., praise the area’s emergency workers, volunteers and the “strong, resilient, self-reliant, caring people” of Mississippi.

While many who were dealt blows by Hurricane Katrina are recovered, thousands of hurricane refugees are still living in FEMA trailers without the resources to regain the small shreds of independence they enjoyed before the storm. MSNBC.com's Mike Stuckey has their story.

At the end of a one-lane road just northwest of Waveland, Miss., stands a house that Katrina built, a literal gift of the hurricane's flood tide. MSNBC.com's Mike Stuckey reports.

Leave it to an artist to come up with one of the most creative contributions to Hurricane Katrina rebuilding efforts. MSNBC.com's Mike Stuckey has the story.

Hundreds of thousands of volunteers have flocked to the Mississippi Gulf Coast, earning the undying gratitude of a community that was brought to its knees by Hurricane Katrina. MSNBC.com's Mike Stuckey profles one couple whose faith found a new outlet in the disaster zone.

A Hurricane Katrina hero who runs a low-power FM station that broadcast search and rescue information during the storm says he’s running out of money to stay in business. MSNBC.com's Mike Stuckey has the story.

Two years after Hurricane Katrina decimated the coastal Mississippi communities of Bay St. Louis and Waveland, MSNBC.com's Mike Stuckey finds a new sense of optimism has taken seed.

A brain condition added injury to devastation for Denny Holmberg. But new friends are trying to help him re-establish his swamp tour business. MSNBC.com's Mike Stuckey reports

While billions of dollars in federal aid is being handed out to rebuild single-family homes in the Hurricane Katrina disaster zone, virtually no funds have been made available to replenish the supply of rental housing.

John Brennan and Daye Moynan have had enough. After struggling for 20 months to rebuild their business and their lives in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the owners of a chic Old Town art mall are selling out and leaving the state. MSNBC.com's Mike Stuckey has the story.

If the trees could talk, they would tell us everything. MSNBC.com's Mike Stuckey updates the situation in Bay St. Louis and Waveland, Miss., 20 months after Hurricane Katrina devastated the towns.

VIDEO: Bay High School freshmen Jonathan Daniels, Leann Cassibry and Will Chisholm talk about their thoughts and experiences 20 months after Hurricane Katrina. Click to watch. (David Friedman / msnbc.com) Rebuilding a house. Moving out of town. Fighting with the...

MSNBC.com media producer David Friedman examines artifacts at the sites of what, until Hurricane Katrina, were homes in Bay St. Louis and Waveland, Miss.

While the Mississippi Gulf Coast struggles to rebuild roads, bridges, utility lines and homes, the gambling industry has made it all look easy. MSNBC.com's Mike Stuckey has the story.

How do you celebrate a bridge? The residents of Hancock County Miss., have plenty of ideas as the new span over Bay of St. Louis.

A key player in the most ambitious post-Katrina development in Mississippi is back in court and his employer is at risk for contempt proceedings in the wake of an MSNBC.com exposé.

In Tuesday’s only real referendum on how government has handled Hurricane Katrina recovery along the Gulf Coast, Democrats in Waveland, Miss., voted to stay the course with their folksy mayor of the past eight years.

In coastal Mississippi, the midterm election isn't generating much interest. In a region that is still focused on digging out physically and emotionally from the costliest hurricane in U.S. history, there’s only room for one issue and her name is Katrina.

Waveland, Miss., Mayor Tommy Longo is fighting to keep his job in Tuesday's election, trying to to avoid becoming the first mayor in the Hurricane Katrina zone swept out of office in the wake of the storm.

Rep. Gene Taylor has a greater appreciation of Hurricane Katrina's destructive force than almost all of his colleagues. a 17-year member of the U.S. House of Representatives. The storm demolished the Bay St. Louis, Miss., Democrat’s Cedar Point home of 28 years right along with those of his neighbors, MSNBC.com's Mike Stuckey writes.

When it comes to voting, new electronic machines are giving elections officials in Hancock County, Miss., a harder time than nature did, MSNBC.com's Mike Stuckey writes.

Federal wetlands regulators have dropped a bombshell on environmentalists with a little-publicized proposal to relax restrictions on filling in certain wetlands along the entire Mississippi Gulf Coast to speed recovery from Hurricane Katrina. “It’s unethical, illegal, immoral, unsustainable and they’re...

Justice is a very personal experience in Hancock County these days, with criminal defendants sitting elbow to elbow with prosecutors and close enough to the jury to hear each gasp or whisper of disbelief.

The Katrina anniversary parade through the devastated center of Waveland, Miss., complete with baton twirlers and marching band, seemed strange, but one band member assured us that "It's part of everyday life."

Evelyn Wells didn't have time to attend Katrina anniversary services Tuesday. She was busy hammering the last few nails into her brand new Habitat for Humanity home.

The congregation of Christ Episcopal Church rang the church bell 58 times on the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina -- one for each local victim of the storm -- then three more for the Holy Trinity.

If there is a positive to be found amid the devastation inflicted on Bay St. Louis, Waveland and Hancock County by Hurricane Katrina’s storm surge it can be found in another type of torrent – the vast river of volunteers that in one year has helped lift these shattered Mississippi coastal communities from the depths of despair.

Bright and early at 8 a.m. Monday morning, on the eve of Hurricane Katrina's anniversary, the taxman cameth. He arrived in the form of an auction in which residents in Mississippi’s Hancock County who hadn't paid their property taxes found their land up for sale the highest bidder.

You've heard of making lemonade from lemons. But making art from rubble? To see that, you have to go to the Gulf Coast. MSNBC.com's Bob Sullivan reports.

A year after Hurricane Katrina made a serious attempt to erase the towns of Bay St. Louis and Waveland, Miss., much has been accomplished. Look at these images to see the progress for yourself, as well as how much remains...

School is back in session and Superintendent Kim Stasny is getting a workout on subtraction and negative integers courtesy of Hurricane Katrina, which left the Bay St. Louis-Waveland School District’s finances in a shambles.

In some mysterious way, Hurricane Katrina served as a wake-up call for Dane St. Pe, unleashing a creative force in the 37-year-old former Marine that he had no idea even existed.

FEMA reverses course and orders tests on formaldehyde levels in travel trailers housing hurricane victims along the Gulf Coast.

A manicure may seem frivolous in, but a bit of frivolity goes a long way when you do without life’s little comforts as long as people have in these Gulf Coast towns pulverized by Hurricane Katrina.

Best Pawn in Bay St. Louis reopened late last year with new overstock items, but now the store is seeing customers pawn luxury items that they bought with FEMA money and are now forced to part with.

Meet Bill Carrigee. He's aggravating, infuriating, loud and intimidating, and he’s arguably the most powerful person in Bay St. Louis.

A battle is raging over the removal of the dead pine trees that once helped shield the Mississippi Gulf Coast from the wind, with residents fearing they could become missiles in the next powerful storm.

Up and down the economic ladder, there is an acute housing shortage in hurricane-battered Hancock County, Miss.

Mega building chains Lowe's and Home Depot are both opening stores in Waveland, Miss., an area where home improvement has a very different meaning.

FEMA trailers have been a godsend to tens of thousands of hurricane surivivors, but an environmental group charges that they are "toxic tin cans" that threaten the health of their occupants.

AmeriCorps volunteers are helping local governments and aid groups in the Hurricane Katrina zone, including conducting a needs survey in Hancock County.

It apparently will fall to local governments to clean up hundreds of properties abandoned by their owners in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

Like hungry alligators, gambling enterprises are rapidly crawling ashore all along the Mississippi coast. Hancock County is no exception, with two casinos due to open by year’s end and a new project that pairs a state gaming company with Donald Trump.

Two brothers involved in the Paradise Bay project in Hancock County -- the biggest post-Katrina development on the Mississippi Gulf Coast -- were key figures in an Internet stock scam that federal authorities say bilked investors out of more than $12 million, MSNBC.com has learned.

To the delight of no one, Mississippi’s most feared residents – its voracious flying and biting bugs – are recovering quite nicely from Hurricane Katrina.

Rings of thieves increasingly are taking advantage of the industrious chaos in the hurricane zone and making off with anything that isn’t guarded, locked up or nailed down, including heavy equipment and more easily stolen items like power tools, lawnmowers and golf carts.

A contractor is racing to rebuild the economically vital Highway 90 bridge across St. Louis Bay by November 2007.

Finally, there's some good news for Larry Lake. The Navy veteran who is battling cancer no longer has to worry that FEMA will repossess the trailer it provided him with after Hurricane Katrina.

The closure of the Morrell Foundation's iCare Village due to the advent of hurricane season has created a serious shortage of housing for volunteers visiting Hancock County, Miss., to help with the Hurricane Katrina cleanup.

Take a video tour of the devastated Bay St. Louis Little Theatre and discover the tragic yet inspirational reasons that the show must go on.

Officials in Gulf Coast towns like Bay St. Louis and Waveland, Miss., are losing sleep over a nightmare scenario as this year's hurricane season arrives. MSNBC.com's Bob Sullivan reports.

It could have been any graduation ceremony in any American town. It was a perfect, breezy spring evening, so breezy that students at times had to cling to their caps, which glinted with bronze tones thanks to a perfect sunset....

Water experts and county officials say the water is safe off the beaches of Mississippi's Hancock County, but they still say swimmers should keep out, even though there are no signs of the danger lurking beneath the waves.

What so far has been spotty progress in replacing the thousands of dwellings wiped out across Mississippi's Hancock County by Hurricane Katrina appears poised to morph into the biggest residential construction boom the county has ever seen. MSNBC.com's Mike Stuckey has the story.

Kimberly Martin, a teacher from Bay St. Louis, and her family will be among the first to move into a local Habitat for Humanity house under a program created to respond to the homelessness caused by last year’s hurricanes.

Just as weather forecasters have difficulty saying where a storm will land and how much damage it will do, therapists say the long-term mental-health effects of Hurricane Katrina also are hard to predict, even eight months after it hit.

Even as he deals with the many difficulties that Hurricane Katrina propelled into his life, restaurateur Tony Trapani still finds time for what he describes as "my religion more or less" -- catching fish. MSNBC.com's Jim Seida joins him for a few relaxing hours off the Mississippi coast.

A drama is afoot over Bay St. Louis' dilapidated link to Hollywood and its best-known landmark to the outside world. The fate of the building featured in the 1966 filme "This Property is Condemned" could be a preview of the fate of other historic properties in Katrina’s wake. MSNBC.com's Mike Stuckey has the story.

Larry Lake, a 71-year-old Navy veteran and Hurricane Katrina survivor who beat cancer once and is attempting to do so again, takes what life deals him and makes the best of it. Yessir, aye-aye. But he’s having a little trouble these days with some news from the Federal Emergency Management Agency: FEMA workers will be coming soon to tow away the 30-foot travel trailer where he has lived since November.

Hurricane Katrina continues to reverberate in the Gulf Coast real estate market, where some communities are seeing mini-booms while sales have slowed to a crawl in others.

Jeff and Rose Watts are urban pioneers of the post-Katrina era -- the first residents to rebuild and move back into a new home south of the railroad tracks in Waveland, MSNBC.com's Marty Wolk reports.

Pete and Betty Benvenutti are getting close to moving into a cozy one-bedroom house that is replacing the century-old home they lost to Hurricane Katrina. MSNBC.com's Marty Wolk reports.

Thousands of Gulf Coast residents are suing insurance carriers after having their Hurricane Katrina claims denied. MSNBC.com's Martin Wolk talks to the

In front of Bay St. Louis resident Woody Santa Cruz's ruined home, a centuries-old live oak tree stands like a sentinel of the past. MSNBC.com's David Friedman shares his story.

Hurricane Katrina victims are learning construction skills so that they can rebuild their homes -- and their lives -- MSNBC.com's Martin Wolk reports.

Shirley Corr has hopes of returning to the Waveland, Miss., home that her late husband built, but she worries that her community will never recover. MSNBC.com's Kari Huus reports.

Marcella Archibeque is spitting mad that she can't obliterate her own bit of Gulf Coast history; she wants her historic shotgun cottage scraped off the face of the earth and sent to the big trash heap where other architectural victims...

Six months after back-to-back-to-back hurricanes lashed the Gulf Coast and southern Florida, the Small Business Administration is running into criticism over its disaster loan program, MSNBC.com's Brock Meeks reports.

A new study that estimates that Bay St. Louis and Waveland currently have 76 percent of their pre-Katrina populations is good news for those trying to fuel the recovery process. MSNBC.com's Brock N. Meeks has the story.

Despite Hurricane Katrina's best efforts, the Bay St. Louis-Waveland Mardi Gras parade took place as scheduled. MSNBC.com's Brock N. Meeks was there.

Residents of Waveland have choice when it comes to purchasing food again thanks the the resurrection of a farmer's market.

St. Rose de Lima church in Bay St. Louis, renowned for its unique Gospel-style Sunday Mass, has been a godsend for the storm-battered community.

Trains are again rolling along the Mississippi Gulf Coast following rapid-fire repairs by CSX railroad workers and contractors on 40 miles of tracks damaged by Hurricane Katrina.

Hurricane Katrina disrupted crime patterns throughout the Gulf Coast in ways that law enforcement agencies and criminologists are still trying to understand.

Most of the animals in the Waveland Animal Shelter died when Hurricane Katrina swamped the facility, but the tragedy has spurred efforts to build a new state-of-the-art facility in Hancock County.

Jeff and Rose Watts are the first residents south of the railroad tracks to obtain a permit to rebuild their home in Waveland. Thanks to a group of German Baptists in Ohio, they hope to be in their new home by the end of February.

Amid the still-huge piles of debris left behind by Hurricane Katrina, a fierce conflict is raging over the pace of the cleanup and the way it is being run.

BAY ST. LOUIS, Miss. – Five months after Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast, the hurricane continues to plunder the coffers of local governments. “The county’s fiscal health is very fragile right now,” said Hancock County Administrator Tim Kellar. “I don’t...

See images taken by MSNBC.com's photographers from mid-October through January in Bay St. Louis and Waveland.

As the rebuilding of Bay St. Louis and Waveland progresses day by day, the time has come to step back to get a broader perspective of what’s happening in the Hurricane Katrina-ravaged towns on which we have focused since the storm.

The irony of what is happening in the post-Katrina fishing industry along the Gulf Coast is as twisted as the steel in the ruins of the marina here.

The prognosis for the only medical clinic still offering free treatment to locals whose world was rocked by Hurricane Katrina brightened considerably Tuesday after Mayor Eddie Favre stepped into an increasingly acrimonious dispute between doctors who say it is undercutting their business and community leaders who maintain it is necessary to meet the health care needs of many storm-battered residents.

For J.E. Loiacano, a former high school and Mississippi State football coach who has owned the Gardens of Memory Cemetery in Waveland for two decades, cutting off stray branches in whatever the weather throws at him is strictly routine.

Hoping for a smoother 2006, the devastated Gulf Coast towns of Bay St. Louis and Waveland quietly welcomed in the New Year.

The Heritage Conservation Network is in a race against time on the Gulf Coast.

"It’s another of our great bumps," is how Charles Gray, director of the Hancock County Historical Society, describes Hurricane Katrina’s horrific impact on Bay St. Louis, Waveland and the surrounding Mississippi Gulf Coast.

If you feel the urge to buy Artillery Shells, Warhawk Missiles, B-29 Bombers or even an 8-Shot Hurricane at 3 a.m., you need look no further than “Crazy Carl’s” fireworks stand off Highway 90.

Despite the brave comments of some Katrina survivors that material possessions can be replaced, some of them cannot.

Among the many signs that this town will return to better times in the wake of Hurricane Katrina is a shiny new playground in the heart of downtown.

Christmas came clear and sunny across this hurricane zone, a glorious Gulf Coast day for Katrina’s survivors to draw together in their houses of worship and around their dinner tables to count their blessings.

With Christmas nigh, Hancock County is taking a breather.

"I’ve never written one of these holiday letters before so it’s a bit hard to begin. And awkward, seeing as how I have some confessions that I didn’t think I’d make while still working as a journalist."

Santa’s elves eschewed the big guy’s sleigh and showed up in a U-Haul truck Thursday to hand out toys, clothing and Christmas trees to dozens of Katrina victims in this devastated community.

To the long list of things that will be missing this holiday season in this storm-struck town, add one more: fireworks.

Hancock County homeowners who may benefit from a massive federal bailout now before the Senate are optimistic about what they’ve heard so far but reluctant to get their hopes too high.

After months of hearing little more than squabbling among public officials about the future of the Highway 90 bridge over the Bay of St. Louis, Hancock County residents on Monday heard something new about their lifeline to points east: Jan. 10.

For more than a week, 50 to 75 Mississippi prison inmates have been out along a stretch of Interstate 10 connecting Hancock and Harrison counties, picking up debris left behind by Hurricane Katrina.

It’s literally a sign of the times: A huge banner outside the Burger King in Diamondhead, a community northeast of Bay St. Louis, advertising yearly bonuses of up to $6,000 for workers.

Lance Rihner of Bay St. Louis explains insisted on decorating his house this year, despite the devastation that surrounds it.

The Big Apple has come to Bay St. Louis in the form of 20 professional actors and singers intent on spreading holiday cheer throughout a community stripped clean of nearly all forms of entertainment.

Christmas won't slip through the cracks for the children of Waveland and Bay St. Louis this year if Margaret Raker, founder of GERT Ministries, has anything to say about it.

About a mile from the destruction of Katrina, postal worker Micki Clifton rode out the storm on the roof of her house with her husband, her 16-year-old daughter and her 72-year-old mother.

While homeowners await insurance settlements and building permits before they can start their reconstruction, the largest construction project in Bay St. Louis is moving ahead at full steam.

The top beauty enforcement officer in this once idyllic beach town is driving around in a foul mood. You see, someone’s stealing pink flamingos.

Half of the Hancock County Library System was taken out by Katrina. The Pearlington branch was gutted and is still being used as a shelter for about a dozen people.

The First Baptist Church Myrick in Laurel, Miss., doesn’t have a huge congregation, just 125, but that didn’t stop Pastor Jackie Spell and three members from packing up a mobile kitchen trailer and showing up just in time for lunch one sunny day at the relief camp on the property that had been the Lakeshore Baptist Church.

Why give a man pre-cut lumber when you can teach him to cut it himself? That’s partly the philosophy behind the donation of a portable sawmill by a California church to a Baptist congregation in Lakeshore, Miss., a Hancock County town just west of Waveland.

Katrina took away Brian Nettles’ livelihood, but he was about to get it back after two New Mexico artists rolled into town with a U-haul trailer.

Mayor Tommy Longo says it was like “walking on eggshells.” That was the feeling he had when FEMA wanted local governments to file requests every 30 days for funds to pay staff overtime. He and others lobbied for six months, and finally got three.

The drawings were impressive and the architects intelligent, so it came as a bit of a shock to Waveland and Bay St. Louis residents when the Governors Commission on rebuilding Mississippi’s Gulf Coast suggested they look at a certain type of housing to start with: pre-fab.

She’s a survivor who didn’t turn and run -- not in 1969 when Camille roared through or in Katrina this year or during smaller storms that have raked this town since the 1950s.

There’s Katrina, and then there’s Tish. Katrina’s force destroyed much of the Gulf Coast, but Tish Williams' energy is helping to rebuild it, or at least the part in her area of influence.

There’s a new term being heard around town: Voluntourism. The concept is to bring volunteers to Bay St. Louis and Waveland on their vacations, enabling them to donate their labor and at the same time restoring some semblance of tourism to the Gulf Coast.

At the request of our hosts, we can only describe where we are as an “undisclosed location” in Hancock County. That’s because organizers of a Christmas toy drive fear being swamped by locals if word gets out before they’re ready to bring parents in.

Little red berries to decorate FEMA trailers could be the big seller this Christmas season at Just Duit Again, a gift store in Bay St. Louis that rose from Katrina’s rubble this week.

Soaking in the rays, she’s a sunbathing beauty that provides some needed visual relief from the trailers, tents and trash along Beach Boulevard in Waveland. But she’s also got a real job: providing purified water used by a relief group and locals.

OK, so it's no phone booth, but this Bell South phone board on Highway 90 in Waveland has been providing free local and long distance calls.

Plans are under way to employ prison labor to help speed the rebuilding process.

Cynthia Mahner throws carnations into the Gulf of Mexico from the beach in Waveland on a stormy Saturday. She was the lone attendee of a memorial intended to give thanks for what remains and commemorate what was lost.

Despite rain, volunteers from the New Waveland Cafe paraded along Highway 90 in a rousing goodbye to the community on the cafe's last day of operation.

The free food and goods being poured into this region so that its residents will have a lifeline that covers their basic day-to-day needs are going away. Some outlets could be gone in a month; three months at the outside.

And then there were 20. That's the official number of missing persons whose whereabouts are still unknown in this region of the Gulf Coast, according to Harrison County Coroner Gary Hargrove.

No one's going hungry here on Thanksgiving Day. No less than five public feasts are being planned for Thursday's holiday in and around the towns of Bay St. Louis and Waveland.

Michael Haggard's fighting an edict from Mississippi's Alcohol Beverage Control board telling him he must now destroy $15,000 worth of product that came into contact with the flood waters brought on by Hurricane Katrina.

Destroyed cars lie where Hurricane Katrina's 30-foot ocean surge left them, battered and scattered amid the wreckage of Waveland and Bay St. Louis. Many cars were mangled and all were ruined by the salt water dunking, which corrodes electrical and other components even after the vehicles dry completely.

Debbie Morton joined six students from the Vanguard College of Cosmetology in Slidell, La., and two other professional hairstylists in giving free haircuts on Sunday afternoon. The crew performed 97 haircuts in four hours.

We hear a lot of incredible hurricane survival stories every day in Bay St. Louis and Waveland, but when we heard the story of the alligator in the living room we had to check it out.

The crystal glasses, chin