15 months later, the Mississippi coast has a ways to go:

Bendas, who has been working with the Biloxi diocese, said he is always struck by the devastation that remains.

"I don’t know why people suddenly think everything is OK down there," Bendas said. "You don’t fix that kind of destruction in 15 months."

Much national attention was focused on New Orleans after Katrina, but Mississippi was hit by the eye of the storm, the strongest winds and the highest tidal surges, wreaking destruction from state line to state line.

Today, 91,000 Mississippians live in 34,000 FEMA trailers, Bozeman said.

Last spring, the diocese was managing 75 to 100 volunteers a week, but on a recent day only 11 were at work. The decline could slow the state’s struggling economy, officials warn.