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.
Can you imagine going from a normal world one day where you can pick up the phone and get in touch with family, friends, whomever to the next day where everything is disconnected? It’s unreal and unsettling. Evacuating for the hurricane was bad enough but being unable to communicate was a real nightmare!
In the days immediately after the storm, I was unable to find both of my children and their families. I knew that they were safe because they had evacuated but I could not reach them. My daughter and family had evacuated to Shreveport, La., and my son and family to Canton, Miss. Our cell service proved inoperable in placing calls within Mississippi or Louisiana due to the storm. Finally we figured out how to call my stepson in South Carolina who was able to reach them. Ironically, he could not call us back so we had call him back for relayed messages. Even then the phone lines were often busy. It was almost a week later before I could hear their voices and learn what happened to them.
Just a quick update on progress. Wal-Mart opened its 57,000-square-foot express store this past weekend. It's nice. They have a little bit of everything you might need, like plastic bins for storage, small appliances for cooking in a FEMA trailer or a house without a stove, etc. And they have some basic food items. It was great to see all the people shopping.
I also rode down Highway 90 yesterday and noticed that a great deal of the debris has been picked up. That's always a good sign of progress. Don't get me wrong. If you ride down the streets of Waveland, Lakeshore, Clermont Harbor and Cedar Point, there are mounds and mounds of debris yet to be picked up. Those areas have a long way to go.
The weekend would have been a normal one if the bottom of our house had Sheetrock. On Friday, we went to the movies. We saw Harry Potter. Saturday we cleaned our back yard a little bit. My mom and I dropped my sister off at a birthday party and then went shopping. On Sunday we went to a Renaissance festival with some friends. So all in all it was a normal weekend except for the fact that when I wake up I watch the sun rise over the water, and a pile of debris.
The weekend was way fun. We went to the Louisiana Renaissance festival. There were fewer shows than last year but it still fun.
It's getting really cold down here, and when I say really cold I mean REALLY, REALLY COLD!!! I barely have any jackets at all. The people from the big tent (Cavalry Chapel) are all bundled up. They even wear mittens under their plastic gloves. My mom bought me this orange fleece today, but it was already too warm to wear it. On Saturday me and my dad cleaned up the back yard.
On Tuesday we're having a Thanksgiving feast at our school. We always have one, but this year a church is bringing the food, instead of each family.
Hairdresser Debbie Morton, a church volunteer from Chicago, cuts the hair of Reverend Frank Kendrick in the Kmart parking lot in Waveland.
Morton joined six students from the Vanguard College of Cosmetology in Slidell, La., and two other professional hairstylists in giving free haircuts on Sunday afternoon. The crew performed 97 haircuts in four hours.
Click "play" above to hear student Randall Watts talk about the role of hairdressing in helping people recover from disaster.
PEARLINGTON, Miss. -- We hear a lot of incredible hurricane survival stories every day in Bay St. Louis and Waveland, where nearly three months later people still greet each other with reports of how many feet of water they had in their house.
But when we heard the story of the alligator in the living room we had to check it out, even though it took us a bit outside our usual area of interest to Pearlington, a town 20 miles west of Waveland that was decimated by Katrina.
To get to the bottom of the story, we dropped in on a meeting of the Pearlington Residents Committee.
The purpose of the meeting at the home of Lena Macillus was to discuss an effort to get Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood to investigate a plan for sewer service that the committee believes would be cost-prohibitive for the 52 percent of residents who live on fixed income, include one-third who live below the poverty line.
BAY ST. LOUIS - The crystal glasses, china plates and heavy silverware at the Sycamore House on Main Street come as a pleasant shock to residents and visitors weary of eating church-provided meals, MREs and fast food off foam plastic plates.
The restaurant, in a historic 145-year-old house on Main Street, suffered almost no damage in Hurricane Katrina and reopened for business two weeks ago with a skeleton crew, limited menu and shortened operating hours.
Business was brisk Saturday night as owners Michael and Stella LeGardeur-Eastham completed their first full weekend since the storm with diners filling all tables in the Provence Room and spilling out onto the screened-in porch despite the chilly weather.
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