On a Thursday morning, three regulars sit in cool darkness. Two shoot pool, another sips a Coors Light. The smell of cigarette smoke clings to walls and hangs in the air.

Turtle Landing Bar & Grill, tucked off U.S. 90 in Pearlington, Mississippi, was once lively, until Hurricane Katrina emptied the town and Louisiana later closed nearby bridges .

Now, 20 years after the storm, the isolation is heavier.

“Big time,” the bar’s owner Janyne Crapeau says, perched on a bar stool.

Daylight briefly seeps in as a man comes in from fishing for bass in the bayou and takes a seat at the bar. He orders a plate of red beans and rice. Beers, at $2.50 a bottle, don’t keep Turtle Landing running. The food does. It’s the only restaurant in town.

Two decades after Katrina, Pearlington remains strande

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