Damage in Waveland & Bay St. Louis

Sorry I’ve been so long in posting the pictures of Katrina’s damage to the Mississippi Gulf Coast. My phone service and internet service was out for quite a while and I’m just now getting my pictures up. When Katrina came ashore on August 29, 2005, it centered on Hancock County. Bay St. Louis, Waveland and Pass Christian got the brunt of the storm. I spoke to people who had as much as 10 feet of water in their homes. Some people only have slabs to show they even had a home. The pictures you’re about to see were taken in Waveland and Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. To be honest, I’m not very sure where Waveland ends and Bay St. Louis starts so please accept my apology in not identifying the proper town.

These first pictures were taken going down highway 603 from Kiln toward highway 90 in Waveland.

First, this used to be a ministorage. It looks like a giant foot (ala Monty Python's Flying Circus) crushed it.

It'd be pretty hard to buy gas from this station...

And I wonder if these people will succeed in getting $310,000 for their property?

Following the storm the people in this neighborhood had to bring all their belongings out to the side of the street for pick up. By the time I made it down there it had been there a good three weeks since the storm. The refrigerators were taped shut by duct tape and had the words “spoiled meat” written on them. The stench was unbelievable. And you can see how close to the street the houses were. Most of the houses were uninhabitable but people were living in tents, and some lucky ones had received their FEMA travel trailers, set up in their yards. It’s hard to imagine having to live with this, but everyone I met, no matter their race or economic status had the same “we’re gonna get through this” attitude. My hat’s off to ‘em!


This building is in Bay St. Louis. It obviously has major structural damage...

These are pictures of what's left of highway 90's bridge over the Bay of St. Louis:
"End of the Road"

Straight on view:


It's hard to see, but this is the side view. All that's left are the supports:

The following used to be home sites near the Bay. The first two are of a place where the home owners lost everything except their sense of humor:


The sign says, "Pardon our dust while we remodel."

This is turning down the drive along the Bay. Remember, people used to live all along the left side of the road.

The next pictures were taken down in this area. Mostly just slabs where homes once were and others look like the house was washed out from under the roof.





When Katrina had passed and I went out to survey the damage around my place I knew I had been greatly blessed. Trees were down everywhere and roads blocked to the point that it took nearly two days working with chain saws just to get out. But there was no real damage to my house! I also was thinking "If things look like this where I live, about 40 miles inland, what does it look like on the Coast?" Well now we know.
Please keep the folks there in your prayers. People from all over are coming down and helping out; cleaning up and bringing aid, and I thank God for them.

Next I'm going to show you what I've had the opportunity to do on my visits to the Coast. In the meantime, God bless and keep you all!

Life After the Storm

Click here to see how some guys from Oxford, Ms spent their Labor Day weekend.

People from all over came down here to help out. The day following the storm the National guard was out clearing the highway so more help could get here. To respond any faster, they would have to be out in the storm catching trees and stuff as it fell. On Wednesday they were starting to distribute water, ice and MRE's (Meals Ready to Eat). On Labor Day, September 5, 2005, our church got the opportunity to say "thank you" to some of the National guard fellows who came here to help us out by giving them an old fashioned "home cooked" meal. We all had freezers full of food that would ruin because we had no electricity anyway, so we had a pot luck dinner and invited them all to come eat.These were the first to arrive:



We showed them into the church fellowship hall and told them to "dig in." Here we see some of the guys line up for food:





Because there were no lights inside we set up tables under a metal shelter outside. (Miraculously, this little shelter weathered the storm without any damage at all.)





The guys standing behind the table to the right in the picture directly above were standing ready to refill glasses as the guys emptied them. They look ready to pounce.

When we found out that the truck drivers who brought in the water, ice and other supplies were camping at the same place with the soldiers we sent word for them to come eat too. We ended up feeding some 50 to 60 people, not counting ourselves, and had enough food left over to feed that many more. We were wishing we could get word to the work crews who came in to work on the power lines.

No joke, volunteers came from all over to help out. I met crews from as far away as Canada. They are all my heroes and I thank God for them.

In the mean time we carried on as best we could. My sister and I moved back in with our parents temperarily because they had a generator, and also to help them clean up around the house. Problem with the generator, was getting gas to run it. It's no fun living without lights and running water when you're used to it, but we did the best we could. Below, my sister and I take care of laundry the "old fashioned way." Sis is scrubbing and washing...



...and I'm rinsing, wringing and hanging out. After wringing out a pair of blue jeans we all agreed not to wear denim till we had a better way of washing.



The temp got up to as high as 100-f and we took to hanging out under the car port because it was cooler than being inside. A humming bird started coming by looking for food so we rounded up a feeder.



After a few days without lights or running water I started to get a little scruffy looking....ok, that's my normal look but I'm still blaming it on the storm! Actually I was out surveying the damage, or lack thereof to our houses, etc, and was struck by how blessed we were.



Next I'll post some pics from down on the coast. Till then be safe and happy.

I've Been Greatly Blessed

I've been offline for a few weeks, (6 to be exact) and I thought I'd start posting some pictures of what I've been up to. There are lots of pics so I'm making several different posts, by category.

This first post are pictures of the aftermath of hurricane Katrina. I was greatly blessed that I had no real damage. Many people who live on the coast lost everything.

Above: This is a view from my parents' house, looking toward the road. Their cedar tree fell across the driveway and knocked down the power line to the house. We had to clear the way out with a chain saw. (All the roads were like that too)

Below: We're cutting up the cedar tree to clear the drive.

Trees in my parents' yard fell over like dominos, but nothing fell on their house.

Below: Dad lost the roof off his shed. I couldn't help but inform him that his roof was leaking. My sister came right behind me and told the same joke. He's a lucky man: two commedians in the family!

Unfortunately, when the roof flew off the shed it hit the green house (and the well but I don't have a picture of that)

Here's where the roof landed:

Before and after. Above: This picture was taken in November, 2004 in the woods behind my parents' house. Below: This was taken following the storm close to the same place. To line them up, look for the skinny, droopy looking tree in the center of the pic above; it's to the righ in the one below.

The two pictures below are of the south bound acess ramp onto I-59 in Poplarville, MS at exit 27. The trees were snapped off like match sticks. This scene can be found everywhere.

These two are views from my back porch. Above: This hickory tree is close enough to my house to do some real damage, but it only lost limbs. Below: This oak tree could also have done much damage had it fallen, but it only lost a couple of limbs.

Behind that oak tree was a bigger oak that was uprooted. And another hickory tree (below) had two trunks and only one broke off, falling away from my house.

The total damage to my house:

Yeah, I know my house needs a paint job, but I can't complain when the sum total of damage to my house needs about four screws to fix.

Oddly enough, the same storm that uprooted trees and nearly wiped away the whole Gulf Coast away wasn't able to dislodge this bird's nest in a little tree in front of my house. See how the leaves look like they were eaten away by bugs? That was wind damage.

There is so much I have to be thankful for: my home, my family, my friends.... In future posts, I'll show more about what we've been up to here. In the mean time, take care, all.

After Katrina (A personal rant)

I’m really tired of the national news media and all their whining criticizing. If all you knew about the world was what they say you’d think New Orleans was the only place hit by Katrina and then Rita. Since the eye of Katrina passed over my house I thought I’d put in my two cents worth about the aftermath from hurricane Katrina and what the news media call the government’s “slow response.”

First, New Orleans didn’t get the full force of Katrina. The storm went to the east of New Orleans, taking a path up the Pearl River, centering on Hancock County, in Mississippi. For those who never heard of Mississippi, it’s that state to the east of Louisiana. Waveland, Pass Christian, Bay St. Louis, Mississippi were most heavily hit by the storm. The storm surge went about a mile inland and almost everything south of I-10 (about 5 miles inland) was flooded and/or destroyed. All the coastal cities were heavily hit, but Waveland bore the brunt of the storm. People there lost EVERYTHING.

I live in Pearl River County, directly north of Hancock County. We didn’t have flooding as bad as on the coast and Southern Louisiana, but we had LOTS of wind and tornado damage. Trees and power poles were snapped off like match sticks. Other trees were uprooted. We had to use chain saws to clear a way, first out our own drive ways, then just to get down the road. Power lines were down everywhere, lying across the roads and tangled up in fallen trees. We were totally cut off from the rest of the world. No power, no phones, all the cell phone towers were knocked down so we couldn’t even call out by cell for a week. Even the mail didn’t run for almost two weeks, and it took nearly a whole tank of gas just to get to a station to buy gas, then they may be sold out by the time you got there. It’s not fun having to do without electricity and running water, but I feel greatly blessed in that at the very worst, I was merely inconvenienced. As I said, some people lost everything. I had to laugh at myself though, because I started sleeping with my Mag-Lite like it was a Teddy bear.

Some things I saw following hurricane Katrina:

The storm hit Sunday night and went on all day Monday. On Tuesday morning, the National Guard was out clearing the interstate so help could get in to us. Yes, that was TUESDAY! The only way they could have responded faster would be to stand out there during the storm, catching the trees and stuff as it fell. The reason they weren’t in New Orleans quicker was because the governor and mayor thought they had it under control. Mississippi governor, Haley Barbour, requested assistance two days before Katrina so FEMA and MEMA had people in the state when it came ashore. Another reason they weren’t in New Orleans faster was the I-10 twin span across Lake Pontchartrain was destroyed. Now to be honest, I don’t know how I-10 was from Baton Rouge, but there was no way to get supplies in from north of the lake.

Wednesday those same National Guardsmen were setting up POD’s in our community distributing water, ice and MRE’s. I thank God for those guys! We don’t have community water where I live yet, so when you have no electricity, you don’t have water. It takes electricity to run a well.

Daily, helicopters and small airplanes were flying over surveying the damage. One funny story: Someone I know was out cleaning his yard and one of these helicopters flew over. He raised his hand to wave at them, and they landed in his yard. They got out and asked if he needed any help, and he said, “Naw, I was just sayin’ hi.” I couldn’t help but notice the difference between the people just across the state line. In New Orleans they’re actually firing on those coming to help and here we wave like they’re old friends.

Churches sent truck loads of food, water and gasoline. Gas was our biggest need. You needed gas to drive to the nearest POD for water and ice, and if you were blessed to have a generator, you needed gas to run it. My parents have a generator so my sister and I both moved back in till the lights came back on. About a week and a half after the storm we were able to fix the well and hook it up to the generator, thus giving us running water. WOO HOO!!! Our main goal became getting gas to run the generator so we could have water and keep Mom’s insulin cool in the fridge.

Work crews from EVERYWHERE came down to help clean up. I saw bucket trucks from electric companies in Ohio, Kansas, North Carolina, Massachusetts, Kentucky, Canada…I lost count. They didn’t have to, but they came down here and worked hard in the heat and humidity to get our lights back on. The day my lights came back on it got up to 100 degrees. The gentlemen who came and hooked us up were from New Hampshire. They said they thought Mississippi was pretty, but they hated the heat. I wish I had thought to tell them to come back in March. That’s the best time of the year to visit. It’s not so hot, and everything is in bloom.

At some point in the second week, (the days started to run together after awhile) Marines showed up at the house, wanting to know if there was anything we needed and if we were ok. And a few days after that, a truck from the Red Cross stopped by and gave us water and two boxes of MRE’s. That never happened before. I remember after hurricane Camille in 1969 we were pretty much left to take care of ourselves, and each other as a community.

I got really tired of hearing about New Orleans though. We lost power Sunday night during the storm and the only contact with the outside world was a battery operated radio that could only pick up WWL in New Orleans. From the time they learned that the storm would pass east of New Orleans and that they wouldn’t get the worst of it they stopped reporting on the storm, as to where and when it would come into land, wind speed, etc. All we could hear was them all excited that we were getting it and not them. Yeah, I know they are below sea level and in a bowl, blah blah blah… but their job was to report on the storm, not gloat that we were getting it instead of them.

Then after the storm all we heard was how New Orleans was flooded, that certain low-lifes were breaking in to hospitals, holding the staff at gunpoint and raping nurses. The National Guard had to escort nurses back and forth to work. Fire fighters were trapped in a building by snipers. Some fools even fired on rescue choppers as they arrived to help. I gotta say that those pilots were more charitable than I would have been. I would have told them to save their ammo for hunting their own food, because I wasn’t coming back.

Still, all the news reporters talk about is New Orleans when Katrina is mentioned. When hurricane Rita blew into the state line between Texas and Louisiana they still went on and on about New Orleans like it is the only place on the coast.

I’m also sick of the news media politicizing everything. They are so intolerant of anyone slightly conservative that they will do anything they can to vilify them, even if it means telling half truths and lies. Sure, President Bush was on vacation in Texas when Katrina hit, but he was aware of the storm approaching, he was in contact with our Governor Barbour, and I’m sure he spoke with Governor Blanco in Louisiana as well. He signed the paperwork declaring the coastal states federal disaster areas BEFORE the storm. He was down here, personally surveying the damage as soon as he could get here. And he had troops here immediately.

And New Orleans flooded because it is a city below sea level, surrounded by levies. The federal government has given money to improve the levy system there time and time again, but the money was often spent elsewhere. There was no vast plot to do away with the poor, elderly and sick. I have no idea why the city officials didn’t have them evacuated; the mayor had all the RTA busses and school busses at his disposal. Possibly he didn’t know where to take them. Truth is, I don’t know. And as far as the druggies and others causing all the violence there goes, I believe if they are able to cause all that trouble they were able to get themselves out of town. I may sound heartless but I’m not very troubled about their plight.

Another thing, I’m tired of the news media reporting on the underbelly of society and letting the true story go untold. I know the old saying, “If it bleeds it leads.” But why can’t they forget about ratings and report the truth for once? If those panty-waist reporters would step out of their air conditioned offices long enough to see the real world they would see people coming together to make the best of the situation. They go on about how we’re “neglected” etc. but I have yet to see a truck full of supplies from CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, or FOX. I suppose ‘twas ever thus: Some stand around griping and others do something about it.

I’m sorry about writing such a long, rambling, and sometimes redundant letter, but I’ve had four weeks to listen to the media tripe and had no outlet with which to give my point of view. I just started typing and couldn’t stop. But I don’t want to close out without saying a very big THANK YOU to everyone who came here and worked so hard to help us out. Everyone from the National Guardsmen, Red Cross and all other volunteers did (and are still doing) a great job and I want them all to know that they are greatly appreciated. GOD BLESS YOU ALL!!!