Ten years ago, when Katrina slammed ashore, I was in Houston, Texas watching it unfold on television.

The nightly news was inundated with images of a drowning New Orleans. Mississippi’s fate was largely overlooked by the national media, despite the overwhelming destruction here.

My family in East Central Mississippi relayed their predicament — no electricity, no water, but plenty of mosquitoes. Trees blocked roads and grocery stores ran out of the basics. It was a similar story here in Lincoln County.

The magnitude of destruction on Mississippi’s coast wouldn’t be fully known for a few days. The news of Katrina’s impact on Mississippi never made it to the Houston airwaves or television stations.

Most of my newspaper colleagues in the state have Katrina war stories — flooded newsrooms and printing presses, power outages and a lack of water. Newspapers printed Katrina’s story as soon as they could. The Daily Leader’s first post-Katrina edition was a four-page edition that had to be printed in Natchez due to power outages here in Brookhaven.

But I knew nothing of this at the time. I was high and dry in Houston.

But that didn’t last long. Almost a month later, Hurricane Rita would take aim at the Texas/Louisiana coast.  Though it was no Katrina, Rita washed homes away and left hundreds of thousands without power.

Where I was, north of Houston, there was heavy rain and power outages and little else. But once again I was looking at destruction on the nightly news, and again I felt helpless.

I felt guilty for not having to suffer the way my family had after Katrina, and the way others were in Texas.

My wife and I decided to help evacuees who had left the coast and made their way to Houston. What we found when we arrived at the large convention center in Houston was unnerving. There were thousands of evacuees flooding the center. Cots had been set up in the large open spaces of the building. My wife’s parents — a doctor and nurse – were helping at a makeshift medical clinic.

My wife and I had seen destruction and poverty up close before — we served as missionaries in South Africa. What we found at the convention center looked a lot like South Africa.

My wife and I pitched in wherever we could, but soon realized there were more volunteers than the convention center could handle. Texans are a lot like Mississippians — they are quick to help each other when times are tough.

Hundreds of thousands of volunteers flooded into Mississippi following Katrina. Forty-six states sent help to the coast. Churches, civic groups and individuals packed up their chainsaws, drove for hours, and got to work.

In just about every place we’ve lived since Katrina, including North Carolina, we’ve found people who helped in the recovery effort here.

That was the biggest takeaway from Rita and Katrina. There was destruction. There was death. There were times when humanity was at its worst. But there was also love. There was sacrifice. There was humanity at its best.  As we remember Katrina’s impact on the state, that’s the message we should take with us.

Luke Horton is the publisher of The Daily Leader.