PEOPLE WERE FRIENDLY, scared, anguished, sad, and mistrustful. In Biloxi one afternoon, a man who'd just looted a corner grocery for beer stared me down, thinking I was a cop. But most times, people grabbed us by the back of the arm and stared into our eyes and made sure we were listening. Days after, they weren't too sure it had happened themselves.

In Long Beach I met Ed Reed—"Ed the Survivor"—in what had been a subdivision called Picture Point. Ed came out of nowhere, strutting down the road singing the theme song to The Dukes of Hazzard. He was sunburned and shirtless, wearing shorts, socks, and flip-flops, and as he walked toward me I wasn't sure if he wanted to say hello or fight. He carried a hoe in his hand like a staff.

"Ain't this some shit," he said. "Can you believe it?"

During Katrina, Ed and his wife had evacuated, but they came back the next day. The National Guard stopped him at the train tracks cutting off the most damaged parts of Pass Christian and Long Beach, less than a mile from the Gulf. When one of the guardsmen turned the other way, Ed ran for it, over the tracks and to the main road, where he climbed a giant mountain of garbage.

A street in Waveland, Mississippi, the hardest-hit town on the coast. (Larry Towell)

He stared down into his neighborhood, bordering the Gulf. Everything was gone. Every house swept out to sea.

"I felt like Charlton Freakin' Heston in Planet of the Apes," Ed said. "You know, when he sees the freakin' Statue of Liberty and all that shit.

"There wasn't a sound," he said, wild-eyed, and pointed to the trash in the trees. "Just this white stuff. Just blowing as easy as laundry on the line."

He blamed the dead on Camille, the storm that had become a benchmark for folks on the coast. If they had made it through Camille back in '69, the reasoning went, if Camille's storm surge hadn't gotten that far and its winds hadn't taken their home, they could make it through anything.

"I bet Camille has killed another 500 people," Ed said.