KILN – In the days leading up to the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, Hancock County emergency director Brian “Hooty” Adam recalled an eerie moment, one he fully recognizes sounds made up.

Trudging through a pile of debris in the woods, Adam stumbled upon an opened book. Staring up at him, he said, were pages from the Book of Genesis telling the story of Noah’s Ark, in which God forewarns of a catastrophic flood.

“If I hadn’t witnessed it, people would probably have never believed it,” said Adam, who took over as director two years before Katrina flooded his county with a nearly 30-foot storm surge.

In 2005, he rode out the storm of biblical proportions in the county’s old emergency office, a defunct bowling alley near the shore in Bay St. Louis. Adam, sporting a full mustache and

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