7 posts tagged “katrina”
Show us something you don't understand.
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.
Conversely, here's a local beachfront business literally a few lots down the street, as it looks 2-1/2 years after Katrina.
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!
Aha! I just found that one of the photos I had of the kitchen shows the photos Miss Janie had hanging on the wall. So I zoomed and cropped, and here you can sort of see the big dredge pipe, and if your eyes are very good, you can see the photos of the house with parts missing.
Our work papers said the house belonged to an elderly woman named Jamie. When we arrived, we met an elderly gentleman who started to show Dave (our fearless leader) where things were left after the last crew, so I guessed that the paper was wrong about the gender of the owner. But as it soon turned out, that was Mr Bob, and the owner's name was really Jane, "as in Tarzan". She's what we all decided was what a Southern Belle was like - very gracious, always looking her best, including flowered hats and all. Mr Bob is the widower of Miss Janie's deceased best friend, and although he lives in Florida, he apparently has been doing handyman type work for Miss Janie for many years. We were never clear even by the end of the week how much of the post-Katrina work on her house he had done, and what had been done by Camp Victor groups (and it seemed some other contractor had been involved at some point as well).
Her house sits right on a bayou, with a gorgeous view of marshland for miles, and then the bay in the distance. Unfortunately, I don't seem to have gotten a photo of the scenery. This is a view of the other houses in the neighborhood - a very picturesque area I thought. Beautiful morning, too!
We learned that this area (Gautier) is pronounced go-SHAY by the locals (I would've said go-TYAY, but this is rural Miz'ippi...)
We met her too-cute little puppy, Olive Oyl...
Here are some views of her house as it was when we arrived - as you can see, it's raised, with no living space on the ground level, because the bayou waters often rise even in normal conditions. Miss Janie showed us photos (which I wish I would've tried to photograph) of the house after Katrina. She had evacuated when the storm was coming, and returned 3 days later to find that there had been 4 or 5 feet of water inside the 2nd level of the house, and also that a huge (6' diameter by about 40' long) dredge pipe had washed in from the bay somewhere and had taken out the whole back corner of the house! In the photos she showed us, you could see right from the bathroom, through what used to be a wall to the back bedroom, and out to the bay. In the living room, which has the bow window you can see behind the scaffolding, the bottom of the bow had been busted out, but the windows were still there. Very odd. She said she moved back in at that point, since the kitchen, 2 bedrooms, and 1 bathroom were usable. We were never clear on when the holes in the walls were fixed, but I'm guessing they were at least temporarily patched to keep the weather out for some period of time. I think the major structural repairs had been done by a contractor some time ago, but either they left without doing any of the finish work, or they were fired, not sure what happened there.
Although, at some point while the walls were still open, she bought a jacuzzi from a friend and had it lifted into the bathroom before rebuilding the walls around it. Kind of funny. She says everyone always asks how the heck she got it into that little bathroom.
Here are some photos of the inside before we got started on it...
We spent some time assessing what we needed to start on, vs what our paperwork had said.
For example, after we read the label on the Hardi-Plank siding, we found it didn't need to be primed at all (it's pre-primed), so we sent Bob 1 to Lowe's with some of the Lowe's cards and a chunk of painted siding to match us some new paint (we had two Bobs on our crew, so we named the one driving the van Bob 1 and the other one Bob 2 - and as opposed to Mister Bob the handyman, haha).
Meanwhile, in the living room, our paperwork had said it was all primed and ready to paint, but it turned out that the previous group had primed over lots of bad drywall/mud work, so our "crack" drywalling crew got right to work fixing it up (which turned out to be a 2-day job just to get it ready to re-prime).
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.
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...
An interesting article in USA Today about Katrina volunteers...
[Please let me know if this link breaks, and I'll post a copy]
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.
Well, our bags are packed and we're ready to go... on a 20-hour (+ Super Bowl stop) bus ride to Ocean Springs, Mississippi, where we'll be spending a week helping people rebuild from Hurricane Katrina. From what we hear, there's still plenty of work to be done. The work assignments change weekly (yes, there have been 200 volunteers every week for a year and a half in this community alone), but we've been told we'll probably be drywalling, painting, laying carpet, etc.
We first heard about this opportunity in an item which ran in our church bulletin for a couple Sundays in September, when the Synod (all the Lutheran churches in western PA) announced openings for their 3 weeks of work trips this winter. Since we had just seen child #2 off to college and had some schedule flexibility, we thought it sounded like a good idea. Also, we've had some first-hand experience of the devastation flooding can cause.
In our neighborhood, where flooding hit over 2 years ago, some people are still displaced. Many homes had to be bulldozed, though some were later rebuilt (some not yet), and raised up another floor. Many people in our neighborhood lost nearly everything. We're fortunate that our house is on a little high spot, so even though the road was closed in either direction, we were able to help our neighbors all that weekend.
So, now we're just helping some slightly further-away neighbors in a similar situation.
Ocean Springs MS is across the bay from Biloxi, which was very hard-hit by Katrina.
We'll be staying at a church camp, along with volunteers from all over the country, but otherwise we don't know too much what to expect. I mean, we've been told what the groups last year have experienced, and we have a pretty good idea of how things are set up (we had an organizational meeting in December with lots of handouts), but I'm sure it'll be different than I might think. We know we'll be staying in dormitory-style quarters, with men and women separate, so we've had to pack separately. There are only a few restrooms & showers for all those people, so we may take advantage of the $3 YMCA offer (to work out, in case we need it, and get a hot shower). Apparently there's a big kitchen to feed all those volunteers, and that's one of the possible work assignments, cooking in the kitchen. We had to fill out skills surveys in December, so since I have far fewer construction-related skills than Al does, I suspect I'll end up in the kitchen at least part of the time. Which would be OK with me, though I really want to do some real work, too. I gather they're trying to allow people to do some of each as much as possible.
We're packing our safety gear (hardhats, work boots, safety glasses, work gloves, coveralls), I got my hair cut really short so I don't have to mess with it, I got a tetanus shot (Al's was up to date), I made some nutritious snacks to bring, we've got our sunblock and bug repellant, and I think we're ready! I've also got the digital camera, and an old wireless laptop from work; they told us that unlike previous trips there won't be computers available, but there is a WiFi network in place, so they asked people to bring laptops so they can go online to locate the work sites, etc.
Our congregation has been really supportive! We're the only two going from our particular church, but they've donated over $1,000 for us to buy Lowe's and WalMart gift cards, which is apparently the best way to get supplies once we're there. Tomorrow they're sending us off with a "commissioning", then we'll go to Mom & Dad's for lunch, and they'll give us a ride to the Synod office (near their house) to catch the bus at 2:00.
We should be in Mississippi by late morning on Monday. We're really looking forward to it!
I'm hoping I can post while we're there, but we shall see about that. The weather is calling for upper 50's & lower 60's all week, sunny, so that'll be nicer than the 5-degree deep-freeze we're leaving :-) Sounds like good working weather...
My Groups
-
Social Justice Updated: 3 minutes ago
-
The Green Life Updated: 5 minutes ago
-
United for Peace Updated: 6 minutes ago
Neighborhood
Explore friends, family, friends & family, or entire neighborhood.
