ABOUT THIS SERIES

In December 2005, a contingent of Poynter faculty and staff members, along with representatives from the Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma, traveled to the Gulf Coast to work with journalists who were dealing with the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. In anticipation of the three-day concurrent seminars in Biloxi, Miss., and New Orleans, Poynter faculty members asked each participant to write a short essay about his or her experience in the days that followed the storm. Those essays, published here for the first time, with the permission of the journalists who wrote them, will continue to appear on Poynter.org throughout our weeklong remembrance of the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Some of the participants agreed to go one step further and provide us with an update of their experiences, which you will find after some of the essays. Click here to see the compilation of essays, which we will add to throughout the week.

DECEMBER 2005:

The moment the buses started pulling up to the Astrodome, you knew that Houston would feel the force of Hurricane Katrina in a unique and profound way. Three months later, the effects are everywhere you look.

You see it in the gutted interior of an abandoned supermarket, where thousands of storm-tossed Louisianans troop through every week to meet with counselors and get help with finding jobs, finding places to live, getting new Social Security cards.

The building has been transformed into the largest disaster recovery center the Federal Emergency Management Agency has ever set up to meet these needs.

It's obvious at City Hall, where the mayor has dared FEMA to back down on its pledge to help pay for housing for 150,000 Americans who've been through the worst natural disaster we've seen in this country.

A crude back-and-forth on the girls' restroom door -- where "New Orleans Takin' Over," is crossed out in favor of, "H-town forever!" and profanity answers a scrawled "Go home" -- suggests the difficulty faced by the children of catastrophe.

A Chronicle reporter saw the graffiti when she was sent to the scene of a brawl that led to the arrests of 27 students at a local high school. It was at least the 12th ''significant'' incident in which Katrina evacuees -- nearly 6,000 of them landed in the Houston Independent School District alone -- have clashed with other students.

These things make front-page news, but any resident of Houston can describe the impact in more personal terms as well. Maybe they recall what it was like volunteering at the Astrodome, or maybe they still marvel at going to a party and being introduced to the New Orleans family living upstairs.

Driving into Houston one day this spring, I was struck by a towering new billboard. "Re-elect OUR MAYOR," it screamed. Only it wasn't "our" mayor smiling down; it was Ray Nagin, beckoning to 100,000-plus stranded New Orleanians -- another odd twist in the saga of Hurricane Katrina.

Nagin's been back several times to offer encouragement, but going home has proven impossible for these folks. Tens of thousands lost everything but their lives in the storm, and they arrived here in that desperate bus caravan from the Superdome. A year later, a state survey shows most are unemployed and 41 percent get by on less than $500 a month. Many have serious health problems. Their options are limited further by the fact that there's still not much to return home to.

As the storm's anniversary approaches, the news coverage has tended to focus on these and other troubling stats. (A clarification: Yes, evacuees have been involved in every fifth homicide here this year; no, this hasn't turned Houstonians against them. We understand the concept of "a few bad apples.")

Yet despite the challenges, people are getting back to their lives. Some new businesses are opening, and artists and musicians are enlivening Houston with Crescent City culture. On the Chronicle's city desk, the storm brought us a terrific new colleague from The Times-Picayune. Tara Young's "Post-K" blog gives readers a unique perspective on the Katrina experience.

Even some of the most distressing news offers hope. Last week, for instance, we reported that one in four Katrina students here have been held back a grade for poor academic performance. That's largely a testament to the deplorable state of New Orleans schools, and getting these children out of there might prove to be the best consequence of this horrible storm.