Part The Second: The Mississippi Gulf Coast
As the festival ended, I discovered that my camera had somehow gotten reset to a higher resolution than I’d intended to use, so instead of having about 120 photos available, I only had about 40 – and I’d filled my card. So our first order of business Monday was to find a new card. Which we did – a 2 gig card – but alas, my camera was too old to run it. So the following day we found a last-year’s-model 5.1 megapixel camera on sale for $79 and I was fine with a camera again; but alas, I had no camera the day we drove through Mississippi. Which is just as well; how many photos of utter devastation can you take before they all look the same?
Anyway, we headed east out of New Orleans to see Mississippi. We used to love the Gulf Coast, and went there often, just to drive along and look at the beautiful old homes and ancient live oak trees, many several hundred years old. So seeing how it’s recovering was a must.
New Orleans East was as destroyed as we’d heard; mile after mile of boarded up apartment buildings, closed businesses (except for a VERY few – home repair places, a few fast food restaurants, and oddly enough, car dealers – would YOU want to buy a used car in New Orleans right now? Hah!), and the roller coasters of the former Six Flags park sitting falling apart in the midst of a giant pool. It was sobering, to say the least.
We stopped in Slidell at a Mardi Gras bead store to ask whether the coast highway was open across Bay St. Louis, and ended up spending quite some time talking with the owner, who told us about how her house, seven miles inland and at a 15-foot elevation, had nevertheless had 22 feet of water in it from the storm surge. And after what we saw the rest of the day, I totally believe it.
We left the freeway and drove down the old highway, U.S. 90, as soon as we could. The bridge across Bay St. Louis is still out; they’ve fixed the railroad bridge, but the auto bridge isn’t quite completed, so they’re running a free ferry. Waiting for the ferry, every building we could see along the shore was either a destroyed hulk or a brand-new building – that was the area that got the very worst of Katrina, and it really showed.
We ended up driving slowly down the coast as far as Biloxi, stopping to eat at our favorite casino buffet that is, fortunately, back up and running. It was sobering to see how few businesses still remained, however. In fact, I’d say that less than 10% of the homes or business buildings are still standing, and of those, less than 10% have been repaired and are in use again. The destruction pattern was very hit-or-miss, too – there were long stretches where there was nothing but bare concrete slabs, and then suddenly there would be a row of houses relatively undamaged (at least in rebuildable condition).
It was also sad but interesting to see what had happened to the trees. There was virtually no tree left with anything above about the 20-foot line – even the branches were mostly blown off. However, what remains of the trees has started blooming again like there’s no tomorrow – they’ll be full again in a short time, even if it’ll be another generation (at least) before they’re as tall as they once were. And, of course, many trees are completely gone. What this has done to the population that lived there is truly unimaginable. Please don’t forget about these folks; they still need our help, desperately.
All in all, it was really heartbreaking to see how utterly devastated the Mississippi coast is. I doubt it will ever be back to the way it was; or if it is, it probably won’t happen in my lifetime. It was such a lovely area, with miles of gracious old homes sheltered under huge spreading live oaks. I’m glad I at least have the memory of it as it was, since I won’t see it that way again.
Continued (and concluded) in next post
