Show us something you don't understand.

Beau Rivage

OK - here's the beautiful Beau Rivage casino in Biloxi, MS - rebuilt to surpass its former glory within a few short months after Hurricane Katrina. Total Biloxi casino revenues during the month of December 2007 were over $78,000,000.

Sharkheads

Conversely, here's a local beachfront business literally a few lots down the street, as it looks 2-1/2 years after Katrina.

Beachfront property 2

Here's a family's home along that same street - someone grew up here, lived their lives here. Annual per capita personal income in Mississippi was about $26,000 in 2006, the lowest of any state in the US (as it was pre-Katrina as well).

And here's what the Mississippi and Federal governments are doing about it.

Maybe I do understand this after all... (hint: $$$$)

But here's what you and I can do to help!

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Our bus took us through Gulfport and Biloxi, along the beachfront, so we could see the progress, or lack thereof, that's been made since we were here a year ago. See for yourself.

I apologize for the quality of the photos, as they were taken from a moving bus. But you get the idea.

Click here for my photos from a year ago. We could see that there were a number of new buildings since last year, though as you can see, there are many which are still just wreckages. It also appeared that there were more that had been completely cleared away - we noticed more excavation equipment on the various lots throughout town. The church steeple which was sitting amongst some rubble in last year's photo is now set up as a memorial beside what will be the new church.

Hard Rock Casino

But of course, the most noticeable new construction is the casinos - we were told that they were mostly back up and running (on dry land, rather than offshore as they were originally required to be) within 6-8 months after the storm, sucking local folks' money into the large gaming corporations based elsewhere, as local businesses watched their entire livelihoods crumble around them while they wait/ed for insurance money.

And that's where Camp Victor comes in... helping real people rebuild their homes so they can live again in the area they love... see the rest of the posts from our trip... more to come...

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On Monday after we ate lunch at Camp Victor, we all loaded into the coach bus for a tour of Gulfport and Biloxi. The purpose was to give us an idea of the scope of devastation and how things still are, since there isn't much destruction in evidence in the parts of Ocean Springs we had driven through to that point. Here are some photos, which are pretty amazing, considering how long it's been since the storm.

One of the young men in our group had been living in Ocean Springs when Katrina hit, and his family moved to the Pittsburgh area where they had relatives. They've been there since, and have still not decided what to do about their house, but he says it will probably need to be demolished. He got on the bus mic and narrated for us as we drove through Biloxi, telling us what used to be where.

"They" estimate that it will be about 10 years till things are back to "normal", although clearly Normal will be something different than it once was.

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