Saturday, December 09, 2006

In Search Of

Hurricane Katrina devastated the Mississippi Gulf Coast. In October of 2005, I finally made it to Biloxi's Point Cadet. I was on a mission. A mission in search of friends homes. My friends were okay and thankfully, I lost no friends during Katrina. But I think my friend Billy, who died a couple a months ago, did so from a broken heart. His home which had been in his family since the 1850's was obliberated by Katrina. But, back in October, almost two months after katrina, I was in search of Pete's house as well as a few others. This is what his street looked like:




I could not even find where Pete's house once stood. All the familiar markers were gone. This one street is just a small slice of the 29,960 homes that were destroyed in the cities of Gulfport, Biloxi, Pass Christian, Long Beach, and St. Martin. This is what a direct hit from a major hurricane looks like. This is what we are still rebuilding. I do have some good news on that front. Up to 7,000 were rebuilt in Harrison County since Katrina hit. If that pace is kept up, that means it will only take 4 more years for all the homes to be rebuilt.

2 comments:

Beth said...

I was in Pascagoula two months ago (for the first time, post-Katrina!). I grew up spending summers there with my grandparents, until we moved there from Chicago when I was 14, and I was actually dreading seeing any Katrina mess. I couldn't believe it when I finally saw it--I had to really look hard to figure out where my grandparents' house was (on the beach)! My mother went soon after Katrina, and for a while could not find the house she grew up in. It was, as you know, an entirely different world to her.
People really have no idea about the level of disaster and suffering, even to this day. All anyone hears about is NEW ORLEANS and the misdeeds there, while Mississippians go on silently trying to rebuild their lives, virtually forgotten. Now Trent Lott is a "porker," because Katrina relief is, to the shamefully ignorant who have never suffered a disaster of this sort, "pork."

:sigh:

Anonymous said...

beth,

Sigh!