A year ago today, much of the central Gulf Coast expected the storm just brushing past the Florida Keys to turn toward that state’s panhandle. That was the prediction by forecasters.

As day turned to evening that Friday, more than a million residents of the Mississippi Gulf Coast, metropolitan New Orleans and its surrounding suburbs realized the storm named Katrina was in fact the storm people feared for a generation.

Though the storm’s brunt was felt more than 200 miles away, Vicksburg and Warren County as a whole felt her fury for days and weeks after its 60-mile-wide swath of hurricane force winds made landfall Aug. 29.

Despite crosswinds that reached hurricane force, traffic got visibly heavier on Vicksburg’s thoroughfares that branch out from Interstate 20. An estimated 1,100 evacuees filled up five church shelters in three days before they were moved to the Vicksburg Convention Center for what turned into a three-week stay for some.

Today, officials in the public and private sector are working to craft a more localized, involved plan to manage effects of future storms that strike the central Gulf Coast and slowly weaken over central Mississippi.

&#8220Every plan is out of date the moment they’re written,” interim Warren County Emergency Management Director Geoffrey Greetham said. &#8220But we’re working to get people on the same sheet of music.”

At periodic meetings this spring and summer, officials from the public and private sector consulted with Greetham to tighten marching orders when disaster strikes.

Gov. Haley Barbour has said in the event of a major storm threatening the Mississippi Gulf Coast, residents from both sides of Interstate 10 will be evacuated, the northernmost point of that evacuation plan remaining undetermined.

School districts have been assigned roles in the transportation part of the state’s evacuation plan, including Vicksburg Warren School District.

Superintendent James Price said four regular buses and two buses for those with special needs will arrive at a staging point outside Hattiesburg and, after major shelters in Jackson are filled, will arrive at four local churches that have notified emergency management that they will operate as shelters.

They are Bovina Baptist Church, Calvary Baptist Church, First Baptist Church and Hawkins United Methodist Church.

Unlike last year, when the Vicksburg Convention Center took in more than 500 evacuees from overflowing church shelters, evacuees will instead be taken farther north in the state.

&#8220Those buses can be readied to go at a moment’s notice,” Price said.

Both the school district and the Warren County Road Department are at least pondering having a reserve fuel storage area to provide fuel if another hurricane should knock power out at gas stations for several days.

Price said the Board of Trustees may take up the issue of purchasing a 12,000-gallon tank for diesel fuel storage for the system’s fleet of 142 buses, a supply he said could allow for two weeks of operation during a crisis.

County supervisors have said any extra fuel storage apparatus would have to be at the county barn. However, no such item is in the operating budget supervisors are expected to adopt Sept. 5.

Downed trees were a problem countywide, contributing to loss of power for up to a week in some areas. Greetham said he was assured by Entergy officials that power would be restored to areas close to the hospital and convalescent homes first, working outward from there.

Loss of electricity during Katrina threatened operations at the city Water Treatment Plant, and officials there briefly considered purchasing a backup generator this year. But with the idea carrying a $1.6 million price tag, the idea was shelved for now.

The disruption Katrina caused to energy supply in general highlighted risk that has been cited in the selection of Vicksburg-area locations for energy projects announced this year.

Since Katrina struck two potential east-west natural-gas pipelines that would cross the Mississippi River at or near Vicksburg have been proposed by two different groups. One, proposed by Gulf South Pipeline Company, would run to near Florence. The other, proposed as a collaboration between Duke Energy Gas Transmission Inc. and CenterPoint Energy Gas Transmission, would run to near Mobile, Ala.

The pipelines have been proposed because more drilling for natural gas is being done in onshore areas west of Vicksburg and not served by pipelines and because the companies want to be able to provide their customers to the east with a backup supply in case of future hurricane disruptions.

Duke Energy secured a commitment from Warren County supervisors to pay a &#8220fee-in-lieu” of property taxes once the pipeline is complete. Last week, Gulf South Pipeline LP made their intentions known to both Vicksburg and Warren County officials to request the same tax break.

Both groups have filed applications with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. FERC decisions are due by late next year.

And a Claiborne County site is among five sites being considered for a planned expansion of the country’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

If the site, at Bruinsburg along the Mississippi River west of Port Gibson, is chosen it could be hollowed-out to receive 160 million barrels of oil.

A Mississippi SPR location would be the first outside Texas and Louisiana, where the other four sites under consideration are also located. That Bruinsburg is farther from the Gulf Coast than any other site currently under consideration has been cited by advocates of its selection.

The SPR is to be expanded to compensate for rising domestic oil demand in maintaining a 90-day cushion against a total interruption of the country’s supply of imported crude.

Reimbursements remain due to county government from FEMA stem from debris cleanup costs and overtime wages paid to Road Department employees. Only $16,870.33 has been paid to date, with $176,155.17 still to come. All money expected from FEMA, county administrator John Smith has said, will return to the department from which it came.

Altogether, Warren County and the city of Vicksburg are due $575,745 for cleanup costs associated with Hurricane Katrina, according to figures released by FEMA earlier this month.

In the area of assistance paid to individuals for housing assistance and other needs, 5,416 people have applied for such assistance in Warren County.

Statewide, 517,610 people have applied for individual assistance totaling more than $1billion. More than $1.7 billion has been marked for payment to local governments to reimburse cleanup costs.

The Vicksburg Warren School District has been awarded $652,500 in Katrina reimbursements from the U.S. Department of Education, Price said.

The district was initially promised $225,000 from FEMA.

As a county, Warren was awarded $752,250, which includes $100,000 given to local private and parochial schools for reimbursement.

The money is to pay for six months of accommodating about 400 students county-wide displaced from the coastal areas by storm. About 80 of those students remain enrolled in the district.