Could it be that Shelboo is gearing up for a "can't change horses in mid-stream" discussion with Tom Meredith? Five years to rebuild...why not 4 years or 7 years or 11 years? Seems like a 'magical' number...hmmm....
I rather doubt SFT is setting anything up by saying that recovery will take five years, although I certainly wouldn't put anything past him. Most everybody on the Coast will say "five years, minimum," if you ask them.
In fact, I can recall that there were areas on the Biloxi beach that remained unrestored & unreclaimed over ten years after Hurricane Camille. In fact, some of the debris-strewn lots didn't really vanish until the great casino build-up of the early '90s, more than twenty years after the "storm to end all storms."