Twenty years ago, in the quiet hours before dawn, Waveland’s police officers thought they were ready.

They had boarded the windows of their Highway 90 headquarters, fueled the generator, checked on their families, and settled in to ride out another Gulf Coast hurricane.

They had done this before. Category 2s. Category 3s. Storms that rattled nerves and tore shingles but left the town standing. Hurricane Katrina, they believed, would be no different.

But by the time daylight broke on August 29, 2005, the officers of the Waveland Police Department weren’t the responders, they were the ones who needed rescuing. They were survivors. Their patrol cars had floated like bathtub toys against the back door, blocking escape. Their courthouse hallways had become rivers.

Twenty-seven officers, dis

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