By: Mona Prufer

Mark Peterson

Hurricane Katrina dealt Coastal alumnus Mark Peterson a triple blow, inflicting catastrophic damage to his home by water, wind and, through an unlucky twist of fate, by fire.

After Katrina but before the fire: Mark Peterson's home.

"When we got back after the storm, the first thing I did was turn off the power breaker," says Peterson, whose Ocean Springs home was just three houses from the bay. "My neighbor didn't do that. When the county turned the power back on, his box arced and caught his house on fire. His motorcycle blew up and caught our house on fire."

The flames spread quickly through the area, and even though the water mains were broken, the volunteer fire department was able to save most of what was left of the neighborhood--but not Peterson's house. "It was just burnt to the ground. We had to bulldoze it to the street," says Peterson, a fish ecologist who graduated from CCU in 1978 with a bachelor's degree in marine science.

The day before Katrina struck, Peterson and his wife Nancy evacuated Ocean Springs with their 14-year-old son Christopher and the family dog, cat and iguana. They traveled 10 miles north to Latimer, Miss., where they sat out the storm at the home of a colleague.

"We had breakfast, then the power went out," recalls Peterson. "A number of trees went down and part of the roof and shingles blew off, but nothing too bad. We never saw the eye [of the storm]."

The Petersons were eager to get back to Ocean Springs and assess the damage, but their first trip was unsuccessful due to a submerged bridge. On their next try the following day, the water had subsided enough to make the bridge passable, but still they had to park and walk a block and a half because of the debris. They were horrified at what they found.

"Every house south of ours was completely leveled, even one on 10-foot supports," says Peterson. "It was just an amazing sight. There were three garage doors in our house and uprooted azaleas in every room. The stove and refrigerator were in other rooms. All the side and back windows of the house were still in place with the hurricane shutters on. I think all the debris from the neighborhood was in our house, piled up against those back windows."

The family was able to salvage some items that were above the five-foot watermark (paintings on wall, books in tall bookcases, Christmas decorations in the attic), but everything below the mark was ruined. "We were able to save Christmas, and my wife was happy about that," says Peterson. A few days later the fire finished off everything but the foundation.

Peterson's workplace, the University of Southern Mississippi's Gulf Coast Research Lab, sustained more than $50 million in damages. Five brick buildings were destroyed as well as his own wet lab, where he housed the fish collection he had amassed through years of research. "I'm basically a fish guy with no sampling gear."

The Petersons were lucky enough to find a house that didn't flood and were able to buy it. "For the first 11 weeks we didn't live in one place for more than a week at a time; it was a house a week with friends and family. Now we hope to stay in one place for awhile."

In the long run, the fire after the flood had at least one advantage, according to Peterson. It allowed him to collect full insurance without having to haggle over whether the damage was due to water or wind. He's also thankful that he chose to check on his house instead of his lab first. "If we had gone to the lab first, which we nearly did, we wouldn't have been able to salvage any of our stuff."

Like Christmas.

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