Not being able to get to people calling for help was the hardest part.

Pvt. Cory Freeman, one of 51 Vicksburg firefighters who volunteered for Gulf Coast duty during and after Hurricane Katrina, said the crews he was relieving were tired and frustrated.

A woman facing rising water, called for help, but the dispatcher answered there was no way to pierce the storm.

&#8220He told her he wasn’t going to be able to help her,” Freeman said. The woman replied by giving her name, address and Social Security number and telling him that she would be dead when she was found.

Neither the woman nor her house was found, and she is presumed among Katrina’s 224 dead in Mississippi, Freeman said.

Vicksburg firefighters began responding Aug. 28, the day before Katrina hit, said Anne Doyle of the Vicksburg fire chief’s office.

Capt. Paramedic Jerry Marshall was in one of the first two ambulances to head south after the storm passed through Warren County, where it was still a Category 1 storm.

&#8220The call went out at 7 p.m.,” Marshall said. &#8220We left at 11 p.m., with the wind still blowing.”

In the days and weeks that followed, more local firefighters went on relief trips to help in search and rescue, delivery and stocking of supplies and, importantly, providing time off for crews in Gulfport and Bay St. Louis.

Initially, Marshall said, the large impact area of the storm made even getting to the coast a challenge. &#8220You saw what happened here,” he said.

Paramedic Willie Holt and Pvts. Trey Martin and Andrew Rogers were also in the first two ambulances to make the trip down U.S. 49 after the storm, coordinated by the Mississippi Department of Health.

From about Florence south, downed trees had to be dodged or cut for the ambulances to travel the road, Marshall said. Mississippi Department of Transportation crews helped clear the path, he said.

Among their first tasks were to help evacuate patients from a hospital on the Mississippi Gulf Coast to one in Mobile and to then clear water and debris from the fire station that would be their base.

&#8220We spent the remainder of the night helping clear debris and answering 911 calls,” Marshall said. &#8220The streets were impassable.”

From Sept. 9 until Nov. 25, the VFD sent volunteer crews of four firefighters each Friday for seven-day shifts to the two departments, Doyle said. Many of the firefighters who volunteered made multiple trips. The added expense of fuel and overtime for keeping Vicksburg departments staffed is in the city’s request for reimbursement by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Capt. Craig Danczyk said the breadth and depth of the devastation was evidence of a storm whose force &#8220you can’t imagine.”

&#8220It was so consistent, as far as you drove down 90,” Danczyk said.

Even coast firefighters reported becoming disoriented because so many of the landmarks on which they had depended for navigation were destroyed, Danczyk added.

Danczyk also said 13 of 18 Bay St. Louis firefighters, for instance, &#8220lost everything” in the storm.

The firefighters slept on mattresses on firehouse floors, on recliners and in ambulances, they said. They ate food prepared by other volunteers, including what Capt. Isaac Smith III said was a Thanksgiving dinner for 10,000.

The Vicksburg firefighters who supplemented coast crews were placed with local drivers. Street numbers were spraypainted on homes where homes still existed, Pvt. Charles Wilson said.

As service was gradually restored to homes in two towns, calls of natural-gas leaks were frequent. &#8220It was a slow process,” Capt. Karl Minor said.

Another task was to unload, organize and distribute to coastal residents food and supplies that had been donated by people in other states, including Tennessee, Texas and California.

Minor said Katrina left coastal residents in shock – and they stayed that way for months.

But there was gratitude.

&#8220One thing that stood out,” Capt. Clarence Maxey Jr. remembered, was an act by one woman in a restaurant who saw that he and a Vicksburg colleague were firefighters. She insisted on paying.

&#8220She probably had no job or home herself, but she just insisted,” Maxey said. &#8220It was a humbling experience, I can tell you that.”