THE NEXT DAY we followed Beach Boulevard west and met Kelvin Schulz, a master mason who installs air conditioners and sells snow cones to tourists in the summer. Kelvin's XXL T-shirt was soaked in sweat as he picked through piles of debris. The entire street was nothing but debris and garbage.

Kelvin owned an old brick movie house close to downtown, a place he'd hoped to turn into a restaurant. As the storm approached, he thought it would be the safest refuge in Bay St. Louis. But on Monday morning, when Katrina rolled ashore, he said to himself, What have I gotten my family into?

With his 21-year-old daughter, Alison, ten-year-old daughter, Suzanne, 17-year-old son, Buddy, his mother-in-law, four dogs, and two cats, he made camp in the movie house. His wife, Emily, a nurse, was on duty at a VA hospital in Biloxi.

Monday morning, Kelvin watched as the building next door started coming apart like an apple being peeled. Water rose in the blinding wind, and huge commercial refrigerators floated by.

It was dark when the water started coming into the movie theater, and his family retreated upstairs. The balcony was built on top of 40-foot timbers, but soon the water slammed in from below, causing it to roll up and down. About 9:30 a.m., the Schulz family decided to abandon the building.

Biloxi resident Diane Johnson returning home to start cleaning up mud and debris. (Larry Towell)

"Actually, the building abandoned me," Kelvin said.

He yelled for everyone to get out as the brick walls began to fall.

"My oldest daughter and son yelled, 'Come on, Grandma!' " Kelvin said. "But she had asthma and was on an oxygen tank. She told us to go on. She said, 'I'm too old for this.' "

When Kelvin opened the outside door, an entire exterior wall collapsed. The family and the animals floated their way to the roof. Kelvin had one life preserver and gave it to his younger daughter. They stayed on the floating roof for hours. They floated forever.

For Kelvin, time stopped. He performed feats of massive strength his kids remember but he doesn't. At one point, Alison's leg got pinned while she was trying to rescue her cat. Kelvin yelled to her, "Fuck the cat!" and, with his son's help, pulled her out.

The rain felt like a sandblaster on their skin. The girls curled into fetal positions, riding the old theater's roof. But the roof started slowly sinking, and Kelvin knew it wouldn't float them much longer. After that, the story stalled. He couldn't recall. "Things happened," he said. It would be 48 more hours before his wife would know they were safe. Her mother had disappeared.

A block away, I helped another survivor, 64-year-old Robert LaMulle, heat his MRE food pack in a neighbor's house—his was a trash pile—where he'd set up a table and soggy mattress. He told me about a body that had been in his backyard.

He led me to the orange flag in the rubble. "It was an old woman," he said.