We live in North Biloxi right by Popps Ferry Bridge, which is one of three ways into Main Biloxi from the north. The way in from the east is from Ocean Springs via the Highway 90 bridge. It was destroyed. They predict 18 months to rebuild. The only other way in from the north is via I-110 that comes into East Biloxi, which was the area worst hit. That bridge is two-lane now because it was damaged, too. You can also get into Biloxi by going about 7 miles west and taking the Cowan-Lorraine Road in Gulfport and going over the new high-rise bridge, and then taking Pass Road back into Biloxi (remember, Highway 90 is ruined), but it is without traffic lights these days and traffic is horrendous. Since our main route in has been torn up, we may have to learn to shop on this side of the bay. Any way you put it, it will be hard to get around for the next year to two years. Besides, some of our favorite restaurants have been destroyed: McDonalds by Edgewater Mall, O'Charley's, and Cajun's Fried Chicken. Other good restaurants were damaged and won't open for a while. I hope Bonefish Grill comes back to the Mall, which badly damaged. Actually, most of the restaurants in Biloxi and all along the Coast have been ruined or totally destroyed.
Sonic by the Interstate was serving a limited menu the other day... you could get either a breakfast burrito, or a hamburger with mustard, ketsup and pickle with fries and a canned Coke. We were tired of eating camp food, so we stopped in for a meal. We were told that they were out of buns and some should come in in about 10 minutes. They wouldn't even take our order because they might not be able to fill it. We waited, and nobody told us that the buns had come in. We then gave our order again. They had buns. We took our hamburger home to eat. Even without much mustard, little ketsup and one slice of pickle it tasted pretty good.
A few days later, McDonald's opened with a limited menu. Can you say, "No special orders"?
Hopefully this won't be the extent of our dining out. Little by little, places will be opening as they get electricity and food trucks can get in to deliver fresh supplies. I'm sure that every restaurant lost food when the electricity was out for nearly a week.

These shrimp boats sought shelter in the canal on Cowan-Lorraine Road where the new high-rise bridge is located. Right now, they are stuck there because Popps Ferry Bridge can't be raised.

One of the shrimp boats had a bit of trouble. Notice all of the pine trees along the shore line that have the tops snapped off.

Under the bridge are two sunken shrimp boats that were blocking the way, preventing boats on the west side of the bridge to move out. There were other sunnken boats along the canal. Note the oil and gas spills.

Quite a number of boats on both sides of the bridge were damaged and unable to be moved out of protective (??!) waters. This is the first time boats were harmed when left along this seaway. Work is underway to retrieve them using divers and crains. I feel for the people who were shrimpers who have lost their livlihood right now.

The following photos are of the Popps Ferry Bridge area.

Here is the approach to Popps Ferry Bridge. This is about two blocks from our house.
One could drive a bit beyond , but not far.

Barricades block off the entrance to the Popps Ferry Bridge. Someone has placed a
sign indicating that we need some mighty blessings.

The word is that it will take from four to six months for the bridge to be repaired. It being out of commission is such an inconvenience to people living north of it. It is really needed.

This is the way the bridge spans are - some pushed in, railings damages. Here is where
the shrimp boat crashed into the bridge during the hurricane.

A lone chair sits on the bridge. Probably washed out of someone's house around
here and swept out by the waves.

On the approach to the bridge looking north, you can see all of the pontoons
that held the floating piers from Keesler Air Force Base. Further on up are the
actual piers - lots of them. Intermixed with the pontoons is a lot of junk and debris.

There used to be a charming little house with a pier and several boats that sat nestled in a wooded area on the banks of the bay on the northwest side of the bridge. The owners, it is said, live in Hattiesburg, so this must be their weekend home. It was a beautiful, peaceful setting covered with trees, and you couldn't see the house from the road because of the density of the trees and surrounding plants. They had a small, rental cottage that was destroyed. The man who lived in the rental was a caretaker of the property. He did stay out in the county during the storm, and was in shock to return and find nothing remained except plastic shrimp packing material strewn all over the trees like someone had tee-peed them.
The entire property couldn't have been more than several feet above sea level, as you can see.

This is a viewof the leveled lot from Popps Ferry Road. Before the storm, you could not see any trace of the house through all of the trees, bushes and huge muscadine vines that covered the roadside between the road and the house and cottage. Now the vacant lot in all of its desolation is in full view.
The caretaker told my husband that Search and Rescue found two dead bodies on the property.
Speaking of dead bodies, many have been found, and they are still looking as the bulldoze areas to move rubble. Our next door neighbors, like dunces, didn't evacuate, but stayed in their home and video taped the storm. During the storm, they saw a dead body hanging high up in the trees, and then it disappeared, washed back out into the surge of water. At one time, they thought their house was going to go (the term used when a house is destroyed), as waves washed into their sliding glass entry facing the Bay.

Friends who just built a new, modern-style house behind the house they previously lived in on our street have a huge amount of debris in their yard. Jimmy build the house nail by nail and board by board by himself, and it took him two years. The house overlooks the water right off Popps Ferry not 50 feet from the bridge. They lost the front part of their second story patio, but their house fared better than ours. This is the view back into the houses across the street from me. Look carefully and you can see that the back end of the house on the right is gone. That is the doll house.
Terrible debris in their yard, including one of those everlasting piers from over five miles away.
They got oil drums, also. His shed is buried under a pile of debris, and is crushed.

Jimmy did lose a lot of trees on his property. Here are some that fell onto the entrance
to the bridge, ruining his privacy fence.

After a long day working on our yard, we took a break in late afternoon and walked over to view the damage. Here is Vern sitting on one of the pontoons, looking at the floating piers that ended up on the road to the bridge. He was trying to take in the enormity of the destruction..

Wedged between one of those piers and a huge beam was a picture tube completely unshattered.
Remember that I said that strange things happened during this storm?

This view looks back from the bridge to the area where I live. The shoreline was pounded, piers and boat houses were torn up, and houses along the edge were badly damaged. Trees are turning brown from salt water damage.

Before the large bridge was built in 1977, we had to get to the south side of the Bay by a causeway that curved around to the left of the new bridge. It had a short bridge. This is a house that is about a block down the causeway. I think it belonged to a family who had a daughter that my daughter went to school with.

Someone has respectfully placed this displaced birdhouse that was washed away from its owner on the bridge railing. I think it is an indication that we will be like the Phoenix and rise again.

On the bridge close to where the shrimp boat rammed it. I found a shrimp net that had wound itself around the bridge railings and intertwined itself with more of those plastic shrimp packing plastic sheets.

Here is a big pile of shrimp packing. It must come on rolls and be automated in the way they fill and seal the individual packs. This could be dangerous to the fish and to pelicans that dive for fish. They could get tangled in it and drown. If this much is on the bridge and in the trees, how much more is there in the water?

While we are looking at the bridge, a group of men who had come down from Maggie Valley, in the western part of North Carolina, with the Haywood EMC took a short break after 5 p.m. to look at the Bay. They had been working for two days on Coast Electric power lines down Popps Ferry Road. It was most enjoyable talking to them. They were friendly and curious abut the area. The guy on the right told me that they wanted to see some water that "sat still". They had never seen water such as the Bay because they are used to fast-flowing mountain streams and rivers.
Three of them had little cameras in their pockets and asked me to take photos of the group for them to take home. While I was at it, I got some shots of them for myself. They said that they had been dispatched to work at other disaster areas, but this one was by far the worst they had ever seen.
When asked if they had any idea when we would get power, they said that the lines were ready to go,
and they were just waiting for Mississippi Power to kick the power to the lines.
They must have done the job right, because the next night our power came on. I could have kissed every one of them! They stayed in a camp the first night, but the second night they were put up in a motel. There was no air conditioning in the motel, and they couldn't sleep for the heat, so they took their cots that they had brought with them and put them outside where the night air was cooler and they could sleep. At that time, we had no mosquitoes in the area. Today (9/7), the mosquitoes hatched and came at us with a vengeance.

Here, two of the Maggie Valley guys look at our "still water", while husband Vern (light shorts) and his brother Billy (light shirt) visit with two more on the far side of the bridge. You can see how uneven the spans of the bridge are. There is damage underneath besides the damage to the spans.

My husband sits amid the debris just north of Popps Ferry Bridge - piers and floats from Keesler AFB covered the road and entrance to the bridge.

Upon returning home - my home and neighborhood in Sunkist
Katrina,Page. 1

Biloxi Pass Road, Cowan-Lorraine Road, St. Andrews
Katrina, Page 3

Biloxi Downtown and Point Cadet
Katrina, Page 4

Holly Hills Area
Katrina, Page 5

An Essay on the first signs of life a few days after Katrina hit
Read about Katrina - "Hope Springs Eternal"

Rebuilding, Recovery and Renewal

Page created 9/7/05.