Twenty years ago, Gerald Malcom gathered a crew of job-hardened utility workers to travel to a storm-ravaged countryside in southern Mississippi where residents were trying to recoup their shattered lives from the onslaught of Hurricane Katrina.
Loading their hardhats, tools, and suitcases, the dozen linemen for Walton Electric Membership Corporation left on a September night from the co-op headquarters in Monroe, Georgia. When the sun broke the horizon hours later, they saw firsthand the destruction wrought by Katrina on Aug. 28, 2005.