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 Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, its storm surge brought four feet of salt water into the Bay St. Louis post office. About a mile away, postal worker Micki Clifton rode out the storm on the roof of her house with her husband, her 16-year-old daughter and her 72-year-old mother.
Today, Clifton, a lifelong Bay St. Louis resident, is delivering mail to some of the few residents who have returned to their destroyed neighborhoods in Waveland. The route, which before the storm served 1,047 addresses now serves only about 25. "It's an adventure every day, let me tell you," Clifton says, searching in vain for anything familiar to guide her through the streets she used to know so well.
While homeowners await insurance settlements and building permits before they can start their reconstruction, the largest construction project in Bay St. Louis is moving ahead at full steam. The CSX railroad bridge that spans the Bay of St. Louis from here to Pass Christian is well ahead of schedule.
When MSNBC first visited the project in October, project manager Billy Baughman and his crew were laying 60-foot-long concrete beams across the piers Katrina left sticking out of the water.
"We just laid the last beam on Monday," Baughman said. "Now the center of activity is on the swing span."
The swing span is a section of bridge that literally swings open to allow boat traffic through; it needs to be repaired and completely rewired.
The original schedule was to get the first train across the bridge by Feb. 28, but Baughman estimates they're about three weeks ahead of that.
There are more than 6,600 people still missing as a result of Hurricane Katrina, according to the National Center for Missing Adults, a group working with the Justice Department on the issue.
The missing are out there, somewhere. Alive or dead or … just plain gone with the wind.
"What a perfect time for someone to disappear," says Gary Hargrove, Harrison County coroner and member of an ad hoc task force working to locate the missing from the Gulf Coast of Mississippi, of the circumstances surrounding the destruction of Hurricane Katrina.
Hargrove’s task force has winnowed the missing list from the 1,300s down to just 68. "But really, there are only 12 missing," he says quite matter-of-factly. And frankly, it’s only those 12 he’s really concerned about. "The other 56 are child molesters or other types of criminal" that have likely used the chaos wrought by Katrina to slip into the wind, Hargrove said. "These are people that don’t want to be found, aren’t going to be found."
BAY ST. LOUIS, Miss. -- The color of Hancock County is changing. To the blue roof tarps and white FEMA trailers, add this: brown workers.
It’s a trend seen across Katrina country as Hispanics who worked in construction in other parts of the United States were drawn by the prospect of good money.
BAY ST. LOUIS, Miss. -- The top beauty enforcement officer in this once idyllic beach town is driving around in a foul mood. You see, someone’s stealing pink flamingos -- in fact, he’s lost two from outside his FEMA trailer and wants them back.
People’s flamingos are coming up missing and they’re not showing up on anyone’s yard,” says Jimmy Loiacano, who really is in charge of beautification for Bay St. Louis.
His third and last flamingo is now on the grill of his pickup truck -- shielded with the protective forces of a zip tie, a Christmas wreath and mini-dolls.
“Somebody tried to poke his eye out,” he says as he takes a permanent marker to the bird’s face in a delicate surgery. “He’s got to see where he’s going.”
As we pass the 100 day mark for Hurricane Katrina here in Hancock County, some days are good, some are bad. Sometimes I find myself very angry and bitter about what has happened here.
But, as I listened last night on C-Span to the Congressional hearing on the Hurricane Katrina Response, I was proud to be a Mississippian. Governor Haley Barbour and his team were praised for their pre- and post-Katrina planning and the job they are doing. The Governor pleaded for assistance for the citizens of the state, especially those who lost homes, but had no flood insurance because they were not in a flood zone. He said, "We need help and we need it now."
WAVELAND, Miss. -- Half of the Hancock County Library System was taken out by Katrina. The Pearlington branch was gutted and is still being used as a shelter for about a dozen people.
The Waveland branch, renovated and expanded in 2003, was also gutted, and books lie around the shell of what was a building, some caked into the ground after three months of mud, rain and sunshine.
One baked history book just outside the entrance was turned to a chapter titled: “Prologue: The First Hundred Days.” The author was referring to President Franklin Roosevelt’s efforts to get the nation out of the Great Depression, but destiny might have had a hand in leaving a message for Waveland -- that nearly 100 days after Katrina, this too will pass.
BAY ST. LOUIS, Miss. -- Lifelong Bay St. Louis resident John Wilkerson has provided his neighbors and MSNBC.com viewers with an amazing photographic bridge between the past and the present in his hurricane-ravaged town.
On his way to seek shelter as Katrina eyed the Mississippi Gulf Coast, Wilkerson, 49, focused his camera on a number of landmarks, presciently realizing they might not look the same when the storm clouds lifted. When those clouds did lift, he took his camera out for another round of shots.
A series of 11 photographic panels, available by clicking on the link at the top of this item, shows views of various Bay St. Louis landmarks and other scenes as they appeared just before the storm and just after. We'll let the images speak for themselves, but you can also listen to some of Wilkerson's thoughts about his photographic endeavor.
LAKESHORE, Miss. -- The First Baptist Church Myrick in Laurel, Miss., doesn’t have a huge congregation, just 125, but that didn’t stop Pastor Jackie Spell and three members from packing up a mobile kitchen trailer and showing up just in time for lunch one sunny day at the relief camp on the property that had been the Lakeshore Baptist Church.
Hamburgers and chicken patties were on the menu and the out-of-town cooks had plenty of takers tired of the canned and packaged food they’ve had to rely on.
This week in literature class we were asked to write a paper on our experiences in the hurricane. I wrote about the whole time I was in Hattiesburg and Birmingham I was wondering how my house was. My mom has been asking me what I want for Christmas and my birthday -- my birthday's on Christmas.
I can't realy think of any thing I really want, it's hard to get into the Christmas spirit. Most people have trees smaller than than their dogs. My aunt, uncle, and grandfather are coming down for Christmas. If we have jip-board downstairs we can make a room for my grandpa down there. If not he'll get my room and I'll sleep in my sister's room. Merry Chistmas.
Remember last year when the Tsunami hit Asia it was all over the news but eventually people sort of forgot about it and the people affected by the giant wave? I guess that is how it is with all news stories, though.
I have been thinking about them more though because now we are in almost the same predicament. I know that in a year our town will not be back to normal or anywhere near it. So I have started praying for the victims of the Tsunami again because there are still people homeless and needing help. Also I don't want people to forget us!
"Old Town" Bay St. Louis was the heart of the arts district in our community and Main Street was where the action was. Galleries, shops, restaurants lined Main all the way to the waters edge with more shops along Beach Blvd.
All that is gone now. Beach Blvd. has been swept away; there is no more street. The businesses on Main Street are only shells at best.
LAKESHORE, Miss. -- Why give a man pre-cut lumber when you can teach him to cut it himself?
That’s partly the philosophy behind the donation of a portable sawmill by a California church to a Baptist congregation in Lakeshore, Miss., a Hancock County town just west of Waveland.
There’s actually more to it than that. After all, it’s faster to just ship in lumber from outside the area. The big payoff is the ability to use trees swatted down by Katrina while also bringing the community together through acts of kindness –- in this case, using the debris to build steps and porches for folks in FEMA trailers and eventually larger structures, even homes.
BAY ST. LOUIS -- Katrina took away Brian Nettles’ livelihood, but he was about to get it back after two New Mexico artists rolled into town with a U-haul trailer.
You see, Nettles had made his living making and selling pottery, but Katrina washed away his studio, supplies and $40,000 in art.
“I have nothing to sell,” he says, noting that 80 percent of his annual sales would have been from October to December.
He’d heard some donated supplies were arriving and showed up to help unload, not knowing what was available. When the trailer door was opened, there it was: a potter’s wheel.
As a songwriter, I know that you can't write a song that is appropriate for every situation, but the songs I hear this Christmas seem particularly out of place. I know that many people want to feel some sense of normalcy, or the way things always have been, but for me, things just aren't, and I don't think I can force them to be.
I've always had a love/hate relationship with this particular holiday. The put on "good cheer" and rampant commercialism have always seemed incongrous with what I imagine the meaning of the season to be. I resent seeing Christmas decorations up at Halloween. I think it's a sad state to wish your life away. I also fail to see how a 3 year old neice or nephew saying "I want this! I want this! I want this!" makes it "the most wonderful time of the year.
WAVELAND –- Mayor Tommy Longo says it was like “walking on eggshells.” That was the feeling he had when FEMA wanted local governments to file requests every 30 days for funds to pay staff overtime. He and others lobbied for six months, and finally got three.
So the next deadline is Jan. 15 -- “positively” a breather, Longo says, but probably not enough time either to stabilize staff salaries. Overtime in Waveland alone has reached $700,000 in the first three months since Katrina, Longo notes.
BAY ST. LOUIS -- A month after most schools have reopened in Hancock County, in scenes that are playing out across the Katrina-ravaged Gulf Coast, there are still plenty of signs that this is no regular school year for students. At Bay High School, dozens of parents lined up on a recent day not to receive supplies but shoes for their children.
At St. Clare School in Waveland, Principal Mark Cumella’s domain has gone from a brick-and-mortar campus to 21 Quonset huts. “Our five structures were all shaved to the slab,” he says.
I thought Katrina would be nice enough to wipe out the gnat population but I was wrong. They are back and hungrier than ever! We were helping our friends get ready for a party this weekend and we were working outside. They would swarm around every part of your body and attack all at once!
No one likes gnats, all the people I talk to say, "I miss it there so much". I really want to tell you all that you are so lucky you don't have gnats!
This is a follow-up to a recent Citizens Diary entry which elicited more responses than I ever dreamed. Thank you MSNBC.com for spotlighting Bay St. Louis and Waveland, Mississippi! The apparent readership of your website is mind-boggling.
I want to address those who assumed we didn’t have any insurance and are expecting money from Uncle Sam. Are you all so down on those of us who choose to live along the beautiful coast of this country that you’d think we’d be so stupid as to not have insurance???
I wrote that we were "denied assistance because our case was declared ineligible due to insufficient damage."
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