Like a lot of people in South Mississippi, I don't think I'll ever be as impressed by a piece of weather like I was impressed by Katrina. I rode it out with my parent's and even though we were roughly 70 miles inland we were without power for a week; eventually cooking on an outdoor grill using bits of debris for fuel. So long as I was able to make a cup of coffee in the morning, cooking it in a metal pot over an open flame, I knew my sanity would be safe.
The people of South Mississippi came together, not in an uncommon show of heroic compassion but in the strength of communal respect and love for a neighbor. The people of south Mississippi didn't whine, didn't beg and didn't complain. They just did what had to be done. Today there's still plenty of scars left on the landscape, but what has risen from the wreckage left that late summer day in 2005 is something of which the people of those communities can be proud.
If you've got the latest Google Earth you can scrub back in time and look at historical imagery. It's easy to see for yourself the damage that was done to miles and miles of the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Here's a picture of the Bay St. Louis bridge, taken in July of 2005
Here's same view, taken August 29th, 2005.
And here's the way it looks today. As we can see it's the 6 Million Dollar Bridge, bigger, stronger, faster.
As you can see the entire bridge was wiped out by the wind and the 30' storm surge that came ashore. It would take years to rebuild the structure.
Here's another set of pictures from Gulfport, several miles east of the previous three.
The Grand Casino, a 500' long, 3 story tall boat, permanently anchored to a cement cofferdam. The storm surge picked it up and carried it 1200' inland. It wasn't the only casino completely destroyed. Many of them found themselves deposited across highway 90 on top of businesses, historic homes, or residential subdivisions.
The post Katrina gulf coast of Mississippi looked like someone had dropped an atomic bomb on the place. Even 70 or so miles inland where I was it was total destruction as far as the eye could see. Drive another four hours north and it still looked like someone had set off a bomb on the place.
Today the President has just arrived in New Orleans to commemorate Katrina's 5th anniversary. I'll be surprised if he gives Mississippi so much as a passing mention.
The media gives a lot of attention to New Orleans following Katrina, especially today, the 5th anniversary, and don't get me wrong. It was a tragedy what happened there. But the rest of the nation, and the major media in general doesn't even seem to remember that, while Nawlins got a lot of the rain, the brunt of the raw force of the storm came down squarely on the chin of the Mississippi gulf coast. But really, who out there really cares about Mississippi anyway? There's nothing there but a bunch of backwards hicks, hayseeds, and yokels, right?
