Biloxi and Gulfport

Richard Fowler (Board Member) writes:

I was at a conference in Mobile, AL, this week and thought I'd take the opportunity to go and have a look at what was happening in Biloxi and Gulfport.

The devastation from Katrina was astonishing. A few very large casinos / hotels were still standing but everything else close the the shore was either flattened or substantially demolished. Loads of plots with a concrete slab and nothing else. There was a cemetery overlooking the sea where huge slabs of marble had obviously just been picked up and dumped in one corner by the power of the water. Everywhere there were huge trees not just knocked over but just completely shredded. Over a mile from the coast trees were still completely snagged with plastic and other debris that had been washed in.

The further west I went the worse it got. I headed north while still 70 or 80 miles from New Orleans. So since that was where the centre of the storm was I can't imagine what that would have been like. Noticed that there were still pretty large trees broken or knocked over at least 150 miles from the coast. Almost as far as Tuscaloosa, AL.

There were a lot of dead dogs on the side of the road, and of course plenty of vultures as well. I think I read about this. After the storm a lot of dogs were abandoned or couldn't get back to their owners so they went wild and started to adopt a primaeval pack mentality. It was like a different world.

Further north in Alabama there were convoys of lorries carrying single-wides with FEMA stickers on them.

The media only seems to talk about New Orleans, but it seemed clear that there was a huge disaster in Mississippi as well, and not an awful lot done about it.