The day after Hurricane Katrina, I was handing out hot dogs to evacuees in Vicksburg. I stopped what I was doing when Gov. Haley Barbour’s office called and told me to get on a Blackhawk helicopter and head south. Soon, I was airborne with First Lady Marsha Barbour, Sen. Charlie Ross, and a few others, flying over the wreckage of South Mississippi. For 80 haunting minutes, no one spoke. The silence said it all—the devastation was unimaginable.

At the time of that flight, I was the Senate Education Committee Chair. For the next couple of years, my job was helping to rebuild the Gulf Coast school system, which had sustained over $900 million in damage. To get federal funds, we had to implement building codes. In 2006, the state mandated stronger codes for six southern counties. By 2014, tho

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