Post-Katrina skyline rises along Mississippi coast

Some people in this tiny Katrina-ravaged town talk of Harry Hull's modest, vinyl-clad home as if a spaceship had landed on the bayou.

It stands out not because it is built on land only 5 feet above sea level -- scores of people have rebuilt on low land -- but because it looms 18 feet above ground. It is raised so high on wooden pilings that Hull, 70, must climb 26 steps to get to his front door.

Yet the structure could offer a glimpse into the future of his city and other low-lying coastal areas nationwide: New flood elevation standards being devised by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and pioneered in Mississippi after Hurricane Katrina would require some houses on low coastal land be rebuilt 20 feet off the ground.

In Pass Christian, where only 500 of the city's 8,000 homes survived the 2005 hurricane, city officials fear that the new maps will frustrate rebuilding. The agency's highest required elevation in that city has gone up 6 to 26 feet above sea level.

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