Unlike New Olreans and Lousiana, whose official response to Katrina seems to have consisted mostly of mugging for various news cameras trying to cover asses and salvage careers, political and civic Mississippi rolled up their collective sleeves and decided that, if the feds couldn't do it, they would:

Hurricane Katrina has transformed Mississippi's mayors into car thieves, and senators into blockade runners. Isolated by the initial hit of the storm and failed by the slow federal response, citizens have fended for themselves in some original and not entirely legal ways. Brent Warr, the Republican mayor of Gulfport, even ordered his police chief to hot-wire a truck.

While no-one in the article mentioned the collapse in Louisiana and New Orleans, some quotes quite plainly reference Mississippi's "I actually have to do something?" neighbor:

"We were literally fending for ourselves," Warr says. "Sitting in a well complaining because no one will throw you a rope is not going to get you anywhere. Instead, you climb out. You hope someone gives you a hand and pulls you. But either way, we're getting out of the well."
...
"I take my hat off to her [Mississippi's first lady Marsha Barbour]," says Ocean Springs Mayor Connie Moran. "She's not sitting around sipping tea and serving tomato aspic."
...
"Poor people know how to survive," [college professor and Turkey Creek MS native Derrik Evans] says. "These are low-income African Americans. We certainly weren't a jackpot tax base. But we've been here for 139 years, and been through one Reconstruction. This community is about as up-on-our-feet as anyone. We're not running around looking around for something to eat and drink."

Nice to see "the other side" finally getting their story told.