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.
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?
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