Above:A 360-degree photo shows a rusted boat and other wreckage at Bayou Caddy, a port west of Waveland. (John Brecher / MSNBC.com)
About this project
In the coming months, MSNBC.com will focus its coverage of the Hurricane Katrina recovery on two cities on the hard-hit Mississippi coast.
Though Bay St. Louis and Waveland are far from the media spotlight on New Orleans, the intertwined fates of the people, businesses and institutions in these towns tell the story of an entire region's struggle to recover from the most destructive storm in U.S. history.
Today I woke up, got dressed, went to church, and worked endlessly in my back yard. It dragged on forever!!! (It was only two hours but still.)
It's slave labor; I don't even get paid. Even though there's no place to spend it.
I realized that I haven't really introduced my self. Hi, I'm Noah Anderson. I live in Bay Saint Louis, MS. I'm the son of two architects, John and Allison Anderson. I also have two sisters Hannah Anderson (who's also writing a blog here) and Sarah Anderson. Hannah's older and Sarah's younger.
My friend who moved to Florida came back for a month. At least I have a hot shower. Sorry make that a lukewarm shower. We have this tiny 20 gallon hot water heater. Oh well it's getting better, see ya.
BAY ST. LOUIS, Miss. — Even with scores of state and federal agencies and volunteer organizations in Hancock County, all sorts of things can still fall through the cracks.
Now, some of the county's heavy hitters have organized to fill the breach.
BAY ST. LOUIS, Miss. - There's a pretty astonishing sight as you head east out of town on Highway 10. Smack between a completely gutted CVS pharmacy and a boarded-up Quizno's are the bright neon lights of Bay Discount Wine and Liquor. It's open for business, a startling beacon of commerce in an otherwise deserted and ghostly strip shopping center.
It seems, says Michael Haggard, the proprietor, that "a liquor store floats."
BAY ST. LOUIS, Miss. — You can see the beach from First Presbyterian Church on Ulman Avenue. It's just about the only place in Waveland, Bay St. Louis, Pass Christian and Pearlington that Sam Thompson's shock troops haven't invaded.
Thompson, 25, a wiry, crew-cut ultra-marathoner, sells running gear on the Web from his home in Dallas. But that's on hold indefinitely. He's now living at First Presbyterian in Bay St. Louis as head of a massive assistance project undertaken by its sister First Presbyterian Church in Vicksburg, nearly 250 miles to the north.
BAY ST. LOUIS, Miss. — Ellis Anderson is relieved. She's dodged one bullet. But she doesn't know how many more are ready to be fired.
Anderson is leading the fight against the "condo-ization" of Bay St. Louis' Old Town arts district, where quaint old businesses and even quainter, older homes have long drawn tourists and art enthusiasts to the edge of the beachfront.
Big-time developers have hungrily eyed the area since it started to rise in prominence over the last few years, hoping to lure well-off new folks to town for the view and the gambling.
For the last few days, I don't know anymore than what I knew a few days ago. We have been living lives with not knowing what, where, why or how come? Nobody seemed to have an answer until the Sun Herald newspaper published this article confirming parts of the rumor. Or did they?
It used to be that when you said you ate out last night it meant at a restaurant with a menu. It is slowly getting back to that. Not quite yet, though. We still have the free food places. My personal favorites are the hippie tent and the big tent.
Although everyone appreciates all of them, these two have the best food. It will be sooooooo sad when they pack up and leave. The hippies are leaving the day after Thanksgiving. So for Thanksgiving dinner, guess where we'll be?
I really want to say thanks to all the people who have helped in any way. We actually met a great new friend at the K-mart parking lot. He was so nice but when I first saw him he sort of scared me. We all got to know him and have a fun time with him, which just goes to show you can't judge a book by its cover.
WAVELAND, Miss. — It's such a mess down here that the cleanup and recovery effort is a massive military operation. Hundreds of Army engineers coordinating the federal response are scouring the region, led by Col. Anthony P. Vesay, commander of the Vicksburg Division of the Army Corps of Engineers. He's head of Task Force Hope, pooling all of the official resources from the state, the federal government and even several foreign countries.
On Friday, though, Vesay and his troops stepped back — for just a moment — to think about their colleagues fighting overseas and those who fought before them. On the beach at the Waveland War Memorial, they joined American Legion Post 77, scores of red-shirted Army Corps workers, other workers and dozens of local residents to mark Veterans Day.
Jerry Pittman, second from left, probes the water of St. Louis Bay with a stick to determine its depth. He and brothers Ernest, Jerry and Chris Willhite and Les Pittman (not related), from Starkville, Miss., traveled 300 miles to Bay St. Louis six weeks ago to work construction jobs in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. On their day off, they walked to the end of a pier on St. Louis Bay and deliberated about whether to jump into the water. Concerns included water temperature and depth.
Click "play" to see and hear them arrive at their decision.
BAY ST. LOUIS, Miss. — Jim Shippey returns from his "mobile factory and distribution center" with a new sample.
The mobile factory is really just his SUV, and the sample is a T-shirt, warning visitors to stay away from "Mississippi yard dogs" — in other words, alligators.
Shippey sells the shirts from under a big tent. He was camped out on the lawn Thursday night next door to Artists of 220 Main, in Old Town, where the Hancock County Chamber of Commerce was throwing a "Business After Hours" bash. Earlier in the day, he'd been set up in the parking lot of a shopping center on Highway 90, where John Brecher photographed him.
Almost two weeks ago I did something I haven’t done in a few weeks. I cried. It came on very suddenly. I was visiting family in St. Louis. My mom, my brother, my sister-in-law, and I were sitting around the dinner table after porking out on spare ribs and all the fixings. I looked around to see all of Terri’s hanging plants, china proudly displayed in the china cabinet that once belonged to my parents, and the cute Halloween decorations populating the shelves, nooks, and pretty much every available space. All of a sudden, it got to me -- that I used to have all this stuff. It is the stuff that makes a house a home.
I started boo-hooing and my family just looked at me, not knowing what to do. The entire episode — from falling off the deep end to getting it back together — probably lasted no more than 2-3 minutes. But still, I had lost it. And here I thought I was back to being normal.
WAVELAND, Miss. -- Glance at the sturdy beams, ignore the staircase to nowhere, close your eyes and you can almost imagine the Filinas' fine house on St. Joseph's Avenue, within earshot of the gulf waters.
The thick timber skeleton still frames the ground floor, which was used for parking. Above were two more levels that Jeff and Heather had called home since 2001, when they finished building it themselves.
I was just reading some of the Citizen Diaries and the one from the lady about her autistic child really got me. So many of us have lost everything. I guess you could say that I was lucky, because my house was not washed away, leaving only a slab.
But my house has shifted off the pillars and is sitting with its rear end on the ground, causing the pillars to poke through the floor. All the floor joists are cracked and splintered, and I have just come to the realization that my house will probably have to be demolished. That is a hard thing to realize and deal with. I am 56 years old and have lived in that house for 51 years. Now what do I do? I have a mortgage on the house that will be demolished in the next several weeks. I am a single working female, and do not have the ability to rebuild my own house.
BAY ST. LOUIS, Miss. — When we last spoke to Camille Tate three weeks ago, she was still agonizing over whether to commit to the stress and expense of rebuilding her bungalow on Main Street or leave town.
Tate is 69 years old, after all, and she's a real estate agent, so she knows very well just how daunting a task it would be to go through with rebuilding. Even so, she says now, she's going to do it. "I know I'm going to have a home here in Bay St. Louis."
The acronym SHRAC stands for “Shoreline Retreat Advisory Commission” and was created by Dr. Rob Young of Western Carolina University. SHRAC is intended to stop the redevelopment of small coastal towns affected by hurricanes, since it costs the government so much.
As a teacher of K-5 kids, I've found it interesting to watch the recovery that my students are making.
The first few days back were filled with confusion as all of the returning students were funneled into one classroom per grade level while we waited for our portable trailers to be ready. While I helped the coaches do outdoor activities (I usually teach fine arts; art, music, dance and drama), the teachers in the classrooms and the counselors heard stories and talked about the storm.
Here come the rumors. As if I really need something else to worry about today after another sleepless night of worries. I pray that none of them are true. After Katrina did her hit and run, my family was more fortunate than some, well at least I thought we were. I may have been counting my blessings and thanking the good Lord for nothing.
Three weeks after the storm, Governor Barbour opened up Buccaneer State Park to all first responders and essential personnel for operations of both cities of Bay St. Louis and Waveland. I don’t know what this state would do without him. I know he is trying to breathe life back into our coast. The 201 travel trailers from FEMA came rolling in. We were assigned one by FEMA and this family rolled into it. It was such a luxury to have a shower after weeks without one.
When we were cleaning up our house I was taking a break on what used to be my couch and I thought it would be a really good picture (if you put me in a haute couture gown, did my hair and makeup and all). You would have to keep the muddy workboots though. So I sent a letter to Anna Wintour. Because that would be a very powerful photo shoot. Don't you think? I havent gotten any reply from her but if anyone knows her you might mention the little girl from Mississippi with the great idea.
I've seen the future of news gathering--and it's not pretty. Actually, it's pretty embarrassing. That's me festooned in probably $15,000 worth of technology. And not a cent spent on style. So help us caption this picture. Take your best shot in the comments.
First, some background: A small team (well, two) from Microsoft accompanied us to Bay St. Louis last week to capture 360-degree video of the devastation. They practically invented the technology. And to our knowledge, this will be the first time it's even been used in news. The resulting movie is something akin to the panoramic photo at the top of this page, only moving video in every direction. For the most part, they strapped the shiny red cylindrical camera to the roof of their rental car and roamed the neighborhoods. But cars can't venture inside obliterated buildings or drive down a beach littered with debris. That's were I, the human tripod (or is it bipod?), came in.
Click "Play" above to see and hear artist Lori Gordon forage through piles of debris in the woods where her home and studio once stood, seeking bits and pieces to use for her post-Katrina works of art.
BAY ST. LOUIS, Miss. -- At first, artist Lori Gordon combed through the wreckage of her neighborhood with trepidation, fearing that she would come across her husband’s cat or, worse, a human body. But that didn’t happen, and over time she came to find comfort and sanity in the activity — salvaging bits and pieces from the mountains of rubble in the woods after Katrina swept away the home, studio and treehouse retreat she shared with her husband, David Wheeler, a wood worker.
Replacing the body of artwork she lost in the storm is impossible, and replacing their home and studio is out of reach for now. But Gordon’s peregrinations have given her a toehold in the future, as she creates new mixed media pieces from the mud-caked fragments she has salvaged from the rubble.
Waveland and Bay St. Louis awoke Wednesday morning to a blanket of fog, creating a different perspective of the destruction for a new reporter in town.
Usually, the devastation is awesome in its sweep; John Brecher, our multimedia producer here this week, says you can go anywhere and it's flattened houses, gutted cars and snapped trees as far as the eye can see. Today, however, the eye can see only about 5 feet. It's curiously like being inside a video game -- details pop up in isolated tableaux as you pass by, one by one by one. John is forever stopping to take pictures of small details you likely wouldn't notice on a clear day.
Welcome to my first Internet blog. It's been really hard living down here. I can barely ride my skateboard down the street without having to walk around a pile of debris. My best friend since kindergarten moved to Florida. The bottom half of my house doesn't have walls. We got Internet last night. This is the first time I've checked my e-mail in weeks. I had like 600 messages. (OK, I over exaggerated a little bit, but I had a lot.)
I started school about a month ago. It was a little surreal. Every weekend I would come home and have to work. Sometimes my dad and I would go work at other people's houses and do stuff there. Well that's all for tonight. I'll write more sometime.
When I was driving home to Bay St. Louis for the first time I noticed the smell. It smelled disgusting, sort of like rotten eggs, mud, sulfur and mold.
When we got to our house we were amazed it was still there, but when we got inside there was two feet of the wateriest, brownest and most disgusting mud I have ever seen in my life. If I ever smell that smell again I think I would gag and turn purple.
BAY ST. LOUIS, Miss. -- Operating in an anonymous trailer behind the County Courthouse off Main Street, a team of 14 workers has quietly saved Hancock County’s records from the next hurricane.
Over the past six weeks, two shifts of seven employees from the LMI company have salvaged, catalogued and scanned in the entire archive of titles, deeds, federal tax liens, transforming the musty and sometimes moldy paper into images that can be retrieved at the click of a mouse.
I was sitting in the middle of a debris pile like a little girl with tears streaming down my cheeks digging through the mud and muck with a spoon that wasn’t even ours. I got lucky today. I dug up one of our spoons -- at least I think it was, too rusty to really tell. I looked my husband square in the eyes and told him that this is the last trip we make back to "the slab.” I just can’t do this anymore. Of course, that was what I said after the last 28 trips or so we have made back to where our home once stood. I keep hoping and praying that I will find something that belonged to us.
We have searched a two block area of debris piles. Where on earth did our couch go? All of our appliances? My daughter’s prom dress? Her Wizard of Oz collection? All my husband’s police gear and his favorite toy in the world, the TV remote? Our Christmas decorations? Good Lord, my spare bedroom was filled with Christmas decorations. My husband teased me about taking stock out with Wal-Mart when I started shopping for Christmas decorations. Everything is gone. The entire contents of a 3-bedroom home that took years and years to get and it’s as if it vanished into thin air. As if we never existed in Bay St. Louis.
I left for work about 6:55 a.m. I like to leave early each morning, because I ride down streets in the Bay and Waveland and just look at the devastation. You see, I was born in Bay St. Louis. It's my home, and, as I said after Katrina, if the dirt was not under my skin, I might consider moving somewhere else. But, where do you go when this is home and has been home all your life?
When I returned home, or to my FEMA trailer, to let the puppy out at lunch, I realized that the refrigerator, air conditioner, TV and microwave were not working. For some reason, a breaker has been thrown, but I cannot figure out which one. So, life in a trailer is quite an experience. I also purchased an over the toilet shelf since there is no storage in these trailers, and I almost lost my religion last night trying to put it together. You see, the space between the shower and the bathroom wall is 24 inches.
Hi. My name is Steven Harper and my wife Heather and I live in Waveland, Miss. ... Well, we have a piece of property in Waveland that used to have a house on it. Now we live in Pearlington, Miss., right on the Louisiana/Mississippi line. There's a lot more info about us on our music Web site www.heddamonkey.com, but I figured I'd start off my MSNBC.com thoughts with what I refer to as the "New Normal".
Almost everyone I know lives in campers now, (I refer to us as the "Trailer Intelligentsia") and an eight foot ceiling now seems REALLY high. A few folks have homes, but no sheetrock in them, as a rule. The piles of garbage, debris, house remains and assorted other flotsam and jetsam line every road in a rising, falling, slowly undulating mass. Large piles go up, then shrink or disappear, to be replaced by new piles, or piles formerly hidden from view.
When I was first able to hear radio news reports from the Mississippi Coast, I heard statements such as "Long Beach is gone." My husband Steve and I had evacuated to Mobile from Waveland packed for a three-day trip. Much of Mobile lost power, so we listened intently to a battery-operated radio for any news of Mississippi. We blinked vaguely at each other, not understanding this word "gone." "What does that mean?" I asked no one in particular. I looked around at my husband, his family, the neighbors who'd evacuated with us; we were all flummoxed.
Many people are leaving and not coming back to Hancock County in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Ground zero is not a pretty picture. Almost total destruction along the highly desirable beach front of Bay St. Louis, Waveland, etc. No homes, no businesses, just mounds of debris. Homes, which were in many cases, occupied by generations of the same family, lay in ruins. The 30 foot or higher storm surge extended miles inland, wrecking property all the way to Diamondhead and the Kiln. Pearlington, Clermont Harbor, Lakeshore, just about everywhere, all was washed away. The dreams and life-long work and determination of getting things "just right" wiped out in a few hours by the awesome power of Mother Nature. People's lives and possessions, simply gone.
Sunday, November 6, 2005. It’s hard to believe that it’s been 70 days since Katrina. Sometimes I think I’m doing well, dealing with the way things are these days, but every once in awhile, I have a meltdown. This morning was one of those times.
It has rained less than a handful of days since the storm, and I know I should be grateful when it does. But words cannot adequately describe what happens when the Mississippi muck that completely blankets all the streets in our neighborhood is rained upon. It becomes thick, pasty, oozy and slippery. I wouldn’t even go out in it if I didn’t have to, but I do because we have two dogs, and dogs need to be walked occasionally.
Even after a devastating disaster, life goes on. While some things, like receiving mail or returning to a job or school, might be put ‘on hold,’ other things just keep accumulating. For instance, laundry.
Dave and I lost everything in the storm, and all we had was what we evacuated with. Good friends scrounged clothes and shoes for both of us, and I must admit, much of it was good stuff. I even joked that, wardrobe-wise, I had come out ahead.
An inevitable fact of life is that laundry must eventually be laundered. But what is one to do when their town is virtually destroyed?
BAY ST. LOUIS, Miss. -- Some kids got out of their cars dazed but smiling, others rushed into teachers' arms, the hugs long and teary. Nearby, Principal Frances Weiler watched, dabbing her eyes as children finally came back to North Bay Elementary School.
It was a back-to-school day like no other in the Bay St. Louis-Waveland School District on Monday as hundreds of children from kindergarten through 12th grade returned to the classroom more than two months after Hurricane Katrina cut through the heart of the Hancock County towns.
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