We are on Day 10 after Katrina. Some of these photos were taken earlier this week; lots of them were taken today on our long trek around the world (seemingly) and back into Biloxi to get prescriptions filled.
Last week at Walgreens, they were using generators and their computer systems were down. They were giving each person (refills or new prescriptions) three pills and three pills only. They wrote your name and your Rx number down in a spiral notebook. We didn't have to pay. Today, I got four refills and they used my Express Pay. Things are gradually improving.

Most roads are clear, but most traffic lights are still not working. In fact, parts of traffic lights are thrown every which way but on the power lines at the intersections. That makes travel hard, but people seem to have patience. Not as many people are running through when it isn't their turn as they did last week.
They have the National Guard directing traffic at major intersections with lights.

Here are some miscellaneous photographs. Some where shot through the front windshield, so they aren't as clear as others::

Out by my old school in Ocean Springs were I taught before I retired, we found the small airport's runways filled with army tents. These few tents are only a small portion of the ones that were there. This photo was taken through the windshield as we were driving , so it isn't great. The school didn't seem to have suffered any damage from the outside, but from previous experience, I'm sure there was some water damage.

We were trying to find a house to check on it for someone in Atlanta who wanted to know if their house was O.K. to come back to, and bad directions took us out to St. Andrews and the Fountainbleu area. Those people were badly flooded. Outside many houses was furniture, mattresses, and all types of appliances. This was about the worst situation we saw. Just imagine the insides. I've read the mold is appearing on walls.

This is the entrance to the St. Andrews subdivision. The small lighthouse says, "Watch Us Grow".

Out in the St. Andrews area in Jackson County, a small concrete bridge crosses a wide area of marsh and wetlands. A huge area containing the grasses that you see stretches for miles.
This boat got washed up on a bank, and it must have come from miles away because there is no water deep enough for a boat this size as far as the eyes can see. It was picked up in the storm surge and the flooding and carried here where it was deposited.

Not three blocks from our house was this one that had been sliced in half through to the floors by a huge pine tree. It cut all the way to the foundation. The tree sat there until either yesterday or today, when it was removed from the actual house. A sign in the yard says, "You Loot, We Shoot."

On Cowan-Lorraine Road sits Plant Jack Watson, our main generating plant for electricity for Mississippi Power Company in Harrison and Hancock County. Guess what? It got flooded during Katrina, and its generators were ruined. It is sitting there inoperable ever since. We have been getting our power transferred in from other Southern Company sources. Notice the lack of smog, and the smoke stacks with no smoke coming out.
Word out of Atlanta from someone in the know at Mississippi Power's parent plant is that they are trying to decide which is more feasible - repairing the old plant, or shutting it down. Oh, the power of a hurricane and its far-reaching consequences!

The word from Atlanta is this: Plant Watson will be repaired.

Remember the shrimp boats lined up in the sheltered canal that couldn't leave because Popps Ferry Bridge by our house couldn't open? Today it opened for the first time, and you can tell that some of the boats are beginning to turn around and head out. Where they will go I can only imagine, because lots of harbors have been damaged.

It was discovered that a lot of these boats have been damaged or sunken. You can see all of the ones washed onshore, and some were tipped over and sank. A massive effort was conducted to lift sunken boats in the canal and from under the bridge so that boat traffic could resume.

Further down Cowan-Lorraine Road we saw a repair crew in action. I couldn't see where these guys were from, because I was taking this shot out of the window of our moving car, but they are still working trying to get power back for everyone.

The remainder of these photos were taken along Pass Road in Gulfport and Biloxi.

An office building on Pass Road in Biloxi that had the sides blown off, looking like another open doll house. You can see the room divisions. This was a sturdy building.

This heavy billboard was blown over in Gulfport.

Not sure what this was, but this crumpled metal was on the side of the road by a gas station.

The Gift Gallery on Pass Road near Debuys was once an elegant gift shop that had those tiny little white lights in the window all year long. Next to it was a gas station.

Here is a closer view of the once elegant shop. I hope they can reopen.

This building got hit badly. It is next door to the florist I used for our wedding, and that our church uses.
I believe it held a store that sold used records and CDs.

Here is our church. It lost its steeple. It is a historic landmark close to Cowan-Lorraine Road on Pass Road.
I've not heard exactly the extent of the damage, but I know some windows were broken and the trees lost some limbs.

To read more about my church, click here: Handsboro

In Biloxi, the entrance to part of Edgewater Subdivision shows some of the damage Katrina did to trees. In addition to a trees that were broken off, the foliage looks as brown and dead as you would think it looks in the winter. However, we have so many evergreen trees (the Live oak to the left usually stay green all year, as do the pines and other shrubs). This is worse than any winter.

Day 11

Today they started bulldozing Ana's house across the street. Then, they stopped. She can't do anything until she settles with her insurance company, who is giving her a lot of trouble, saying that water damaged her house, and she wasn't in a flood plane so didn't have flood insurance.

The infamous freezer of rotten shrimp that the owners (our neighbors) rolled down the street away from their house. It's been smelling terrible for three weeks. They should have re-frozen it until the city was ready to let contracts for picking up ruined appleances. The sign says "Looters will be shot", but I don't think the looters would want to go past that terrible stench to loot anything! Can you say, "Peeeee-uuuuuu"?

They need to start coming through the neighborhoods and picking up the debris soon or we will be swallowed up by all of it.
They did start this week (around the 14th) but won't pick up this freezer. It still stinks!

Here is the bobcat that is doing all of the mighty moving of debris. They have already punched a hole in the lovely sailboat. Wish we could have salvaged it. Nobody could move it. The sailboat is being torn up - they can't find the owner, and say he is from New Orleans.
Don't know how they know that if they didn't locate the registration numbers.
Hope it was insured. He probably doesn't know where it is.

The house next to Ana's that had the back washed away. This is more of the debris that washed into our neighborhood. I heard today that this house will have to be bulldized because the inside is completely ruined.

Turn around 180º and you see another view of Jimmy's house and yard. More unbelievable debris,
including what looks like someone's deck that was washed up in the storm surge.

The late afternoon sun captures Popps Ferry bridge up after Ana's house had been cleared away just a little. This view is from my front yard. We haven't been able to see the bridge like this since the early 1980's.

For days after the storm, I picked up photographs that had blown into our yard from Ana's house. They were all over the yard, front and back, along with the shrimp boxes and plastic bags and insulation and other junk. I have quite a large pile to give to her when she has a place to put them. They are about the only things salvageable from her entire house. Right now she is living in a house that her mom bought at the other end of the cull-de-sac. One of the crew who was standing around recognized me as I was standing across the street watching to see what they would do with the sailboat. She pulled the above photo out of the wreckage and brought it over to me. It's of Vern and me when we were at Ana's house one evening for a party. It may have been taken last year on the 4th of July. I scanned the photo, and if you could see it magnified, you would see all kinds of dirt and scratches on it. I used film cleaner on it, but it couldn't get everything that was embedded in the finish off the photograph. All of the photos are scratched and dirty, but it's amazing that they came through like they did in all of that rain and with the pounding they got.

Looking back from our street down Baywood Drive you can see the piles of debris in front of everyone's homes.

Looking down our street, you can see how high the piles of debris are on my far side of the street. The houses are almost out of sight because the piles are so high. We got more junk washed in from the bay, and we have more trees down on this end. This was taken from a lawn across the street from me.

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

Popps Ferry Bridge, Lorraine Road
Katrina, Page 2

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 9/8/05.