Damage

I am back. One benefit of seeing the family at midpoint in my trip is that now I have two shorter trips, instead of one long one. That is easier to handle.

If you have read my other entries, you may notice that I have not dealt too much with the destruction that is ever present here. That is partly because the camp duties, by necessity keep me here. But partly it is because I have not found it an easy subject with which to deal. I have taken scores of photos that have not made it past PhotoShop. When I take a hard, discerning look at the images around me here my reaction is physical. I speant time at a destroyed school and the smell turned my stomach. As I drive around the city and take photo after photo of the powerful and often complete destruction, I end up with a headache. I feel heartsick as I look into shattered homes and think of the shattered lives they represent.

Interestingly, now that I have just experienced the grief of losing my father, I think I better understand a fraction of the grief the people here must be dealing with. I think what I had been experiencing was a physical grieving for the people of the Gulf Coast. My mourning for them is no less, but now I am ready to try to share more of their story.




One thing that is hard to comprehend is the power of the forces that came to bear on the coast. Below is the Biloxi-Ocean Springs Bridge. It was a four lane cement slab bridge. The sections that were tossed aside by the tidal surge were 3-4 foot thick blocks of concrete that weighed hundreds of tons.











Another thing that is impossible to comprhend is the extent of the destruction. These photos are one place, in one town, in one county, in one state that is a small portion of storms rath. That anything was left standing along the beach is amazing to me. One can drive for miles and the destruction is constant. These are not the houses that PDA is helping to repair. These houses are cleaned out with a bulldozer. The houses that our teams are working on are actually at the second level, if you will, where the flood and winds damaged, but didn't destroy a home.



These two photos were taken in Biloxi, just off the beach. In the view below, I am looking across two lots whose houses were wiped away entirely.






This photo was taken in Ocean Springs where the debris line came a quarter of a mile inland. Here again I am looking across the debris of two houses. Today I was told of a house that was entirley covered (covered!) by the storm surge. When the surge came in it destroyed the man's work shop in the back yard, lifted the home off its fondation, swept the shop machines under the house and then dropped the house back on top of the machines.







Give the residents any excuse and they will tell you their story. They are working through their grief. Others mourn by working. Signs of "normalcy" are here, as well. Mardi Gras is coming and even if one has to pressure wash the muck off the float, Mardi Gras will be celebrated.


Return to normalcy is discussed in terms of decades rather than years or months, but it will return.


iXs,
the Rev