We lived in Moss Point, MS from 92 to 2001, and we’re both just heartsick at this horrific tragedy. It seems like a bad dream - how could a whole region get so ruined so completely so swiftly? Katrina tore our hearts out from afar - in 98 Georges left 42 inches of mud and bayou water in our house for two days, so we know the horror of a catastorphic hurricane - but to heap this insult on top of that ongoing carnage? The Gulf Coast cannot take this much ongoing abuse, and I weep for those forced to watch (and smell) this happen.
I feel the same, and it’s a bitter, guilty feeling. Specially when I go diving and see how reefs are dying and deteriorating, but while they stay are so beautiful that I wish either they’ll remain there for my (if ever have) kids or that at least I’ll be able to tell them just how amazing those places were.
Right this moment, in many areas of Thailand up to 80/90% of corals are bleaching due to the exceptionally hot year.
I lived in Louisiana for awhile. Those marshes are…oh, there are no words, they’re so delicate, and we’ve already done so much damage by pretending we can control the damn Mississippi and then this happens…
I am not personally a fan of living anywhere where it’s hot and humid, let alone swampish, but this hurts.
My Gulf Coast memories and how it’s changed over the last 30-40 years:
When I was growing up in the late 70s and 80s, my family went to the Mississippi Gulf Coast for the weekend usually 2-3 times every summer.
We generally stayed at the Alamo Plaza in Mississippi City (an area that mostly consisted of a strip of motels, but has been swallowed up by Gulfport, so you probably won’t find it on any modern map). The Alamo Plaza was clean, cheap, had a nice pool and was right across Hwy. 90 from the beach. The pool was actually in front of the motel, right off the Hwy 90 frontage-road. So you had a view of the beach from the poolside. The whole motel was surrounded by ancient oak trees, so there was lots of shade. If the Alamo Plaza was full, we stayed at the Biloxi Beach Resort down the street.
The beach strip consisted of little motels like these and lots of little restaurants, and of course the obligatory Waffle Houses and International Houses of Pancakes (long before they started calling them IHOP).
There were gift shops every few blocks, some of which were major landmarks as you drove Hwy 90. As you approached Gulfport from the west, was the SS Hurricane Camille gift shop, which was a little building with a tugboat that had washed ashore during Hurricane Camille in the 60s. When you saw the tugboat, you knew you were getting out of the residential area and into the tourist/resort area.
There were a number of waterslides, go-kart tracks and bumper boat rides, as well as a couple of mini-golf courses (the goofy-golf type with the windmills, etc.). The fastest go-karts were at the Beach Arcade in Biloxi.
The Edgewater Mall in Biloxi had antique car shows during the summer. They actually had all of the cars INSIDE the mall, scattered throughout the concourse. I specifically remember a space-agey looking Citroen sports car that was at all the shows. It was the first Citroen I’d ever seen (and I can’t say that I’ve ever seen one up close since).
The ruination began in the early 90s when the casinos came to the coast. The Alamo Plaza went downhill and became a dirty sleazy motel, as did a lot of the other small cheap independently owned motels. The independently owned restaurants had all been replaced by Applebees and Red Lobster, etc.
Into the 2000s, the Alamo Plaza and the motels adjacent to it were demolished to make way for a highrise condo development. There were casinos taking up a lot of the beach in Biloxi. There were casinos on the beach at the western edge of Gulfport and a couple more as you headed east. There was one waterslide/go-kart/bumperboat/arcade left in Gulfport. It just didn’t have the feel that it had when I was a kid and the only real attraction was the casinos. I couldn’t imagine bringing the kids out there to stay in an overpriced hotel. There was still a few small motels, but even they were overpriced and they looked seedy. I sure as hell wasn’t going to bring the kids to a casino.
On August 20, 2005, the ex-wife and I and the kids met my parents in Gulfport for lunch at the Red Lobster (ugh). My kids were 7 and 4 at the time and it was their first time on the coast. After lunch, we took them to Funtime USA to ride the go-karts and play goofy-golf. The kids enjoyed it, but I knew it just wasn’t the same as it was when I was a kid.
A few days later, a tropical depression formed and a week later, it was all gone. The rest is history.
Funtime USA was wiped off the map, as was the Red Lobster we’d eaten at a week before. The SS Hurricane Camille managed to stay where it had been for 40+ years, but there was no trace of the gift shop behind it (the owner decided not to rebuild and the boat was hauled away a couple of years ago).
Now when I drive down there, the only landmarks I recognize are the casinos. All of the motels are gone. A lot of the houses that sat across from the beach are gone. Even the casinos have moved off of the barges in the gulf into permanent buildings on the shore.
The only thing left is the beach, which Katrina had eaten, but sand was dredged and pumped back in. I took the kids out there last summer and let them play on the beach for a while. I couldn’t get a motel room for under $250 due to some event that was going on that weekend, so we had to drive home wet and sandy. It still was a fun day and the kids enjoyed it.
Now, we’ve had an oil spill. Looks like this could be the final nail in the coffin.
On a positive note, my neighbor just came back from Gulf Shores, Ala. and he said the beach was beautiful and packed with people. They saw something that they thought might’ve been a tarball, but otherwise it’s not as bad as the media is making it out to be—YET. I think it’s inevitable that the oil is going to hit the beach and I’m guessing within the next week or two, there won’t be a usable beach in Mississippi or Alabama and possibly Florida.
I have a friend who just returned from spending the day at Gulf Shores. She said while she was there, she saw a strip of oil about 10-20 yards long. She said a crew came to inspect, and another cleaned it up. I’m afraid that’s just the beginning of things to come.
See, everything about this is anathema to me. Landscape critiques? Really? But then, I’ve never been in a natural landscape whose beauty I couldn’t appreciate on its own terms, nor could I imagine doing so. I’ve spent all day hiking in the high desert when it was 113 degrees out, and came out thinking the place was spectacularly gorgeous. Trekked for days on end at 98 degrees and 80 percent humidity, and thought it was wonderful.
shrug Like whatever you want to like, but I can’t pretend to relate to it.
Aren’t you a biologist?
Tons of oil naturally seeps into the gulf every day. I’m sure with some digging we could find estimates of natural seepage versus the inputs from the oil spill, but nature obviously has some mechanisms for dealing with it. I’d be willing to place a bet that there won’t be visible beach soiling in 10% of currently affected areas in 3 years.
Sure. And the Iraqi oil spill from 1991 is entirely cleaned up too. Oh, and the oil from the Valdez.
(Hint: no it’s not.)
Yes, the oil is still present from the Exxon Valdez spill, but you have to go digging for it. Here’s NOAA’s current take on recovery of tourism in the strait:
http://www.evostc.state.ak.us/recovery/status_human_recreation.cfm
I would presume that the weathering process occurs at a faster rate in the warmer gulf-regions as bacteria breaks down the oil.
To say that you can *never *take your son to one of the many locales described is slightly dramatic. Don’t get me wrong, the spill is very bad, but it will not turn the gulf into an uninhabitable wasteland for decades to come by any means.
Well, Jefferson Davis’ home, Beauvoir, is still in Biloxi (restored since Katrina), but it’s been around for a long time.
My first visit to the Mississippi Gulf Coast was in the 1980s, before the casinos and big time tourism destroyed the quaint character of the area. I was back a year after Katrina and was amazed how thoroughly wiped out the coastal areas were. I’m really sad the oil spill will make yet another blow to this area.
Stop complainting, be fined in a couple of months.
Anti-UK proapaganda byu malignant US forrced.s
Beauvoir is still standing, but was heavily damaged. They were still giving disaster tours the last time I was out there.