[Online Extra] 2005 Leadership Winner Survives Storm

Jerome Goddard, a medical entomologist, Mississippi Department of Health, Jackson, Miss., survived Katrina at his home 150 miles inland. “We’re okay but have some damage. Trees everywhere,” he said. “One hit the house and also totaled my pick-up.”

Goddard lives in central Mississippi, where they endured a Category 2 strength hurricane. “Every mile you go south from here the landscape is increasingly destroyed. We were without power and under a boil water notice for four days,” he said. “Many people here in central Miss. will be without power for three weeks (the power company said).”

Goddard said the worst problem in his area is no gasoline. “There were only about eight stations open for several days after the storm and lines were half mile long,” he said. “There was two- to three-hour waits at the gas pumps. Some people are sleeping in their cars at the gas stations — in line — waiting for the next tanker truck to come fill up the station.”

Goddard’s wife, Rosella, rescued an elderly couple who had been sitting in a blazing hot house with no power. The couple, whom Rosella knew, had found someone to loan them a generator, but couldn’t find any gas to run it. The old man had been going from station to station with no luck. “Rosella drove down there, siphoned five gallons of gas out of her vehicle, gave it to them, and drove back. They live about 30 minutes south. She told me that she'd been belching gasoline and breathing out fumes for hours now,” Goddard said. “I told her not to blow out any candles! Or stand by someone smoking!”