A resort without the resort
As many of you know, Uncle Dave travels around the country for his job. This past week, I was in Gulfport, MS, just down the road from Biloxi. It’s one of the many cities on the Gulf hard hit by hurricane Katrina last year. If a building was on the coast, it was either heavily damaged, turned into rubble or it simply disappeared.
I was working in the just opened Island View casino which is constructed in on the ground floor of a rebuilt hotel. The casino used to be called the Copa and was located on a barge in the Gulf. You can SEE HERE what happened to the barge last year.
I’ve uploaded a bunch of photos I took, mainly along Highway 90 between Gulfport and Biloxi. Many stately homes a few feet from the shore exist now as nothing but foundations. In the downtown area, the water reached as high as the third floor of many buildings. As a result, some buildings now look like they are perched on stilts: fine on top, but everything below was washed away.
One of my coworkers talked to a couple of the new casino employees. All are extremely grateful the casinos are starting to come back to provide much needed jobs. Some of the stories he heard were heart wrenching. One girl had been living with friends and was looking forward to making money to buy her own clothes. She had escaped with what she was wearing at the time and her home no longer exists. Another had put her grandfather in a hot tub shell which would float only to watch him be washed out to sea.
While New Orleans gets most of the press, it’s far from being the only casualty of Katrina. While the rebuilding you can see driving around the towns along the coast is impressive for only being a year out, clearly there will be scars of what happened for a long, long time to come.
Good Job Dave
Gotta love the private property sign!
Too sad, Dave.
When I worked at Avondale Shipyard over in Harvey, LA, we used to party once in a while over at the boss’ family place in Bay St. Louis. The beaches and shoreline communities — Gulfport and surrounding — were so mellow you could hardly believe you were in the US.
As many of you know, Uncle Dave travels around the country for his job
What do you do in Real Life, UD?
Living on the Carolina Coast I know it can takes years to recover from a major storm. Many people and communities never do. Even if you have insurance, it’s never enough. If you try to rebuild at the same site, the banks and insurance companies may not want to play. Unless there’s federal buyouts of land, many people have to use the land they have. Insurance only covers structures, not land. It’s true that too many people are living in hazard prone areas. What’s to be done, many have been there for generations. We can try to slow down coastal development. Multimillion dollar homes on an eroding beach is just foolish. These homeowners are the ones screaming for Federal tax dollars to salvage their investments.
I live and work in Pascagoula, MS, just 20 miles east of Biloxi. We also recieved a tremendous of damage and flooding, but it wasn’t near as bad as places like Gulfport, Biloxi, Long Beach, and the near complete destruction of Waveland.
Thank you UD for the pictures. The mainstream press has ignored us in MS (as usual) for the most part. Maybe its because we don’t complain as much on camera as people in certain other states. I have been through at least 4 major hurricanes and when they are done everyone goes outside and gets busy rebuilding.
#3: I work for a slot machine company in Las Vegas installing their player tracking system in casinos, doing training, etc.
I worked at Stennis Space Center and lived in Bay St. Louis until late 2002. The house I rented and neighborhood I lived in are gone.
I also live in Pascagoula, MS, and I appreciate ANY attention we get over this storm. We had 4 1/2 feet of water in our home and we live over 1/2 a mile from the beach. When we got back after the storm, instead of waiting for help from the government (which wasn’t coming anyway), we started cleaning up. We threw everything we owned to the road, then took our house down to the studs. We’re now back in our home and are thankful for all the wonderful volunteers. We got a grand total of $2000 from Fema and $1200 from our insurance, not nearly enough to rebuild. But, you don’t see us still sitting around outside. We pulled together, as a family, as a congregation, as a city, and as a state, and put ourselves back together. But, you don’t hear about that on the news. All you hear is New Orleans. Well, Pascagoula got hit too. Dirtboy is right. Because we don’t complain and actually got to work cleaning and rebuilding, we don’t get any coverage.
I’ll relate one more story, and I’m done. You hear so much about people looting and no one helping in New Orleans, but this is how we dealt with it. First, all of our neighbors were checking on one another, even ones I haven’t met before. And, a day or so after the storm, when food was getting scarce, the local grocery store actually put all of their food outside for everyone who had no money or means to eat. They said they were going to lose it anyway, and they wanted to help. This wasn’t a chain, this was a locally owned store. That was the spirit of cooperation that we had here. I hate to tell you, but if you’re thinking that if something bad happens where you live, the government will handle it and take care of you, just look at New Orleans. Yes, you may get a Fema trailer and a few dollars, but it takes family, friends, neighbors, and sometimes just caring people to really survive. Sorry for the long rant, but I just want people to know, there are other stories besides the New Orleans/Biloxi/Gulfport versions of Katrina.
Forgot to mention a T-shirt I saw down there that some of you might appreciate:
FEMA =
Fixed
Everything
My
Ass
X-wing..If anyone has a collection of devastation photos that did not get published. We’ll do it. Everyone is right Mississippi was totally ignored.
These pictures are great and you have to wonder what it would take to send an NBC film crew down to the area once in a while to show it for what it is. Baffling.
I don’t know how important LA, MS et al are to elections, but I suspect this is yesterday’s news
11: Yesterday’s News–unfortunately you’re right as far as most of the politicians and media are concerned. That also applies to other hurricane damage, tornadoes, etc. The news media get their AP article or the pols their sound bite, and then a few weeks later the aftermath is ignored.
Hopefully the properties that got devastated won’t be built on again. Make those sandbars into state parks or wildlife refuges or something like that.
You want pictures? I got pictures. I work for the school district down here in the tech department. 14 schools and their damage taken between 4 days and 2 weeks after the hurricane. Not nearly as bad as to the west, but still a lot to clean up. I don’t expect you to host all of these, John C, so I’ll just redirect you to our gallery:
linky
i used to live in naw’lins, but fortunately i left before katrina hit – I really feelin for the poor bastards who couldnt/wouldnt leave… in any other country this wouldnt have been ignored to the extent that it is here… make me hate this administration all the more.
Uncle Dave,
Thanks for your pics. I live in Gulfport (My Church and Kids School is where the McDonald’s picture was taken), and it looks 100x better than one year ago. The effort of Military and Civilian alike, has been nothing short of extraordinary.
New Orleans and Mississippi’s circumstances are different. Mississippi’s is from an “Act of God”, where the majority of New Orleans’s problems are from a Post-Katrina levee collapse due to acts of man (misappropriated levee funds: i.e. corruption). The shame is that many were harmed in either place.
Thanks for all they thoughts, prayers, and donations of time and money. The compassion of this country has made a premanent impression of all vicitims of Katrina.
GuyD, you’re exactly right. Mississippi got a hurricane, New Orleans had a levee breach. Ours was a natural disaster. Theirs was man-made. New Orleans and the government knew the levees were sub-standard YEARS before Katrina. I used to listen to WWL in the morning back then and they were saying that if a category 2 or 3 hits, New Orleans will be totally flooded. Nothing was done. Then, when it did happen, the government was powerless to do anything. I think the main reason was because of Fema being hidden inside Homeland Security. Both are bureaucracies that thrive on red tape and paperwork. It used to be that local and state civil defense agencies would jump into action and things were taken care of on a state level. Civil defense was also more attuned to local needs and was more of a military department, thus they acted quicker. I remember after Hurricane Frederick in the 70’s, the National Guard were patrolling our streets. We saw two National Guard trucks during the entirety of the Katrina aftermath. In fact, we didn’t see police until 2 weeks after. There needs to be more reform in the disaster relief department before the next disaster. Otherwise, we’ll have another Superdome tragedy.