Hurricane heroes: a crisis can bring people together. For state legislative leaders, Katrina did just that.

• Author: Boulard, Garry

As soon as Mississippi Speaker William J. McCoy found a way to get to his state's devastated Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina swept through, he was there, trying to find House members whose districts were walloped by the big storm.

"I was just like everyone else, trying to locate people I care about and not always getting answers," says McCoy, who has seen a lot of tropical depressions come and go in the more than two decades he has served in the Legislature. But he had never seen anything like Katrina, which made its appearance only months into McCoy's first term as speaker.

His own district in the far northeastern corner of Mississippi suffered only a marginal amount of wind damage, but McCoy instantly realized that the aftermath of the storm would be the greatest challenge he would face as a leader.

"I still can't describe it," McCoy says. "Everything--and I mean everything--was hit. Homes, businesses, churches--it looked like what was left after a war."

What frustrated the speaker the most was his initial inability to make contact with his fellow lawmakers whose districts on the Gulf Coast were left sand-swept and barren by Katrina.

"You always assume you can get in touch and then something like this comes along--and nothing," says McCoy, who was learning a hard lesson in what it is like to be a leader in a time of crisis. Ultimately, McCoy worked with area utility company officials who located his members for him.

The homes of several Gulf Coast lawmakers were almost entirely destroyed. Their constituents were displaced. But Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour wanted to move quickly, calling for a special session just three weeks later to address the many policy challenges left in Katrina's wake.

Once McCoy knew the Gulf Coast members were safe, he quickly formed what would eventually be called the House Hurricane Recovery Committee. It included not only the chairmen of every standing committee, but all of the members from the southern Mississippi districts hardest hit by Katrina.

"How else could we move forward? We had to listen to and have the participation of the men and women who could bring their own personal experiences and perspectives," McCoy explains.

For the speaker, good leadership, especially in a time of crisis, was all about widening the circle: "To do anything without them would have been unthinkable," he says.

CRISIS OF COMMUNICATION

Just 260 miles to the west, legislative leaders in Louisiana were taking a different approach to the crisis. More than a million people, fleeing from the disaster in New Orleans, arrived in Baton Rouge. Phone lines to the capital were jammed as people and members of the legislature were asking the same questions about water, food and shelter.

"For us, it was all about communicating. That was the first thing...