Grand Casino, Biloxi, MS, five months after Hurricane Katrina made landfall in Mississippi.
On August 29, 2005, the eye of Hurricane Katrina made landfall in Waveland, Mississippi, and the western side of the storm grazed New Orleans. Five months after the storm, I visited the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
According to a National Hurricane Center report on Katrina, “in many locations, most of the buildings along the coast were completely destroyed, leaving few structures within which to identify still-water marks.” The center’s researchers estimate that the hurricane produced a storm surge as high as 27 feet in some locations.
It was dumbfounding to drive along the coast in Biloxi and find the Grand Casino on the north side of Highway 90. Before Katrina, the casino was on a barge, docked off the beach, south of the highway. The storm surge lifted the casino barge out of the water, over the beach and over the highway. If you stand at the western end of the barge and look east, you can see the yellow and blue neon sign, a half mile down the road, where the barge originally sat. The same thing happened to two other casino barges—the President Casino in Biloxi, which landed on top of a Holiday Inn, and the Gulfport Grand Casino….
The national media have covered the near-total destruction of Bay St. Louis and Waveland. Driving along Beach Boulevard in the two towns, I saw a few people who had returned and were living in trailers on their plots of land, but practically everything was deserted. All that remained were the merest remnants of homes and the things that had been inside them….
In each place I visited along the western half of Mississippi’s Gulf Coast, the look of the destruction was a little different, but it was consistently total. And surprisingly, the destruction in the coastal areas of Pascagoula, at the eastern end of the state, is comparable. I remembered George W. Bush’s promise to rebuild another “fantastic house” for Trent Lott on the Pascagoula beachfront. I did not know that 95% of the city’s residential areas went underwater or that 65% of the city’s homes remain uninhabitable. Northrop Grumman Ship Systems’ facility in Pascagoula, which before Katrina employed 19,800 people, was all but obliterated.
Hurricane Katrina wiped out the entire Gulf Coast of Mississippi. The scale of the destruction is difficult to comprehend. All along the coast—mile after mile—just about anything that was there is now gone.
But this is only part of the story. According to the National Hurricane Center, the surge “penetrated at least six miles inland in many portions of coastal Mississippi and up to 12 miles inland along bays and rivers. The surge crossed Interstate 10 in many locations.” Interstate 10 runs east-west, four miles or more north of coastal Highway 90.
Gayle Tart’s brother Sam and his son John died in Pass Christian during the hurricane, on John’s second birthday. Tart explained that father and son had drowned inside their own home.
“Water never came down there [before Katrina]. That’s across the track. [With Katrina] that water came in and that water went out, and the velocity was unbelievable,” Tart said. “The first boundary was the beach and the next boundary was the highway. The day after the storm, you saw neither—no beach and no highway.”
When I wrote this for Dollars & Sense Magazine in 2006, I focused on the housing crisis faced by Katrina survivors in Mississippi. Today, at the fourth anniversary of the storm, the housing crisis rages on, thanks to government inaction and skewed priorites.
Small rental and workforce housing progress has fallen dramatically short of State predictions, and so Mississippi has asked HUD for additional funds to temporarily subsidize lower-income residents in market rate rentals….
- Mississippi has allocated just over half its funds on housing, and has lowered its commitment to housing by over $800 million in the past 2 years. Louisiana has allocated over 85 percent to housing programs and increased its commitment over the same period.
- Mississippi has spent just under half its funds, while Louisiana has spent almost 68 percent of its funds, widening its lead over Mississippi.
- Mississippi diverted $600 million from its housing program to a port expansion, while Louisiana intends to reinvest $600 million in unused Road Home funds for housing assistance for low-income residents.
- Mississippi took longer to spend less later for low-income residents than for wealthier residents.
But the housing crisis was just one part of the ongoing disaster. Katrina has also been a cultural and ecological disaster of epic proportions.
A family photo rests on the foundation slab of a home obliterated by Hurricane Katrina in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi.
I emphasize Mississippi in this blog post because I know that nearly all of the fourth anniversary coverage of the ongoing Katrina aftermath, will focus myopically on New Orleans. The situation in New Orleans is still dire. The housing crisis is dire. But there will not be an adequate recovery until the interconnectedness of regions and issues becomes a fundamental insight that drives policy.
While poor and minority survivors and activists will agree (if anyone asks them) that they face multiple, interconnected disasters in the aftermath of Katrina and Rita, this basic local insight goes largely unrecognized. Government failure is certainly most responsible for a “recovery” that has been arbitrary, resource-driven, and slow rather than holistic, need-driven, or effective. But no one, progressives as a group included, has adequately depicted, let alone offset, that failure. Narrowly focused aid has often segregated otherwise related issues, making one or another worse and masking the lack of an overall plan. Residents of the region feel tremendous gratitude to the tens—if not hundreds—of thousands of volunteers whose countless hours of labor, along with their financial contributions, are primarily responsible for what rebuilding has occurred. However, this individual good will is no substitute for the kind of comprehensive, coordinated, and sustained response that is needed from government at all levels.
Unfortunately, no thoughtful and coordinated response will occur without a compelling grassroots push for community visibility, multi-issue awareness, and broad social justice for Gulf Coast survivors. Our region today remains in a cultural, environmental, economic, and human rights crisis no less severe than its more frequently discussed housing crunch and extending far beyond the parishes of its famed city, New Orleans. The media, policymakers, academicians, and private funding groups repeatedly fail to recognize regional connectivity or to challenge the basic invisibility of the Gulf Coast’s multiply wounded communities and ecosystems—together, its very soul. [P]iecemeal analyses and responses … are moving social justice and equitable recovery nowhere fast.
The Gulf Coast Civic Works Act, still needing co-sponsors in the House, is a step in the right direction:
a hybrid model to partner directly with communities in planning, overseeing and administering recovery projects to assist the survivors of these disasters, provide communities with tools to build resilience against the impact of future disasters and revitalize the region economically. The bill would create a minimum of 100,000 prevailing wage jobs and training opportunities for local and displaced workers on projects reinvesting in infrastructure and restoring the coastal environment utilizing emerging green building techniques and technologies. This program would empower residents to realize their right to return with dignity and create stronger, safer, and more equitable communities.
Ask your Representative to co-sponsor this important legislation.
Carland Baker, Sr. on the site of his former townhouse, Longwood Apartments, 2012 2nd St, Long Beach, MS.
More reading and resources
§ Posted by Benjamin T. Greenberg on August 30, 2009 at 7:37 am
Gustav is now a Category 4 hurricane.
HAVANA, Cuba – Gustav has grown to a Category 4 hurricane with 145 mph winds, U.S. forecasters said Saturday, as the storm pummeled a Cuban province, threatened Havana and led to the evacuations of more than 240,000 Cubans.
The parallels to Hurricane Katrina three years ago are striking. See, for example, this report from the National Hurricane Center, 1 a.m., August 28, 2005:
…KATRINA STRENGTHENS TO CATEGORY FOUR WITH 145 MPH WINDS…
A HURRICANE WARNING IS IN EFFECT FOR THE NORTH CENTRAL GULF COAST FROM MORGAN CITY LOUISIANA EASTWARD TO THE ALABAMA/FLORIDA BORDER…INCLUDING THE CITY OF NEW ORLEANS AND LAKE PONTCHARTRAIN. A HURRICANE WARNING MEANS THAT HURRICANE CONDITIONS ARE EXPECTED WITHIN THE WARNING AREA WITHIN THE NEXT 24 HOURS. PREPARATIONS TO PROTECT LIFE AND PROPERTY SHOULD BE RUSHED TO COMPLETION.
Gustav is expected to touchdown somewhere in the same stretch of the Gulf Coast:
The hurricane is still expected to hit the US Gulf coast on Monday or Tuesday, anywhere between east Texas and west Florida. Experts say the most likely area lies between Houston and Mobile, Alabama.
The eye of Katrina actually hit Waveland, MS; New Orleans just caught the side of hurricane, the worst of its devastation coming from the flooding that came after the worst of the storm. When I visited Mississippi for Dollars & Sense Magazine in January, 2006, I observed that in Bay St. Louis and Waveland:
I saw a few people who had returned and were living in trailers on their plots of land, but practically everything was deserted. All that remained were the merest remnants of homes and the things that had been inside them….
In each place I visited along the western half of Mississippi’s Gulf Coast, the look of the destruction was a little different, but it was consistently total. And surprisingly, the destruction in the coastal areas of Pascagoula, at the eastern end of the state, is comparable. I remembered George W. Bush’s promise to rebuild another “fantastic house” for Trent Lott on the Pascagoula beachfront. I did not know that 95% of the city’s residential areas went underwater or that 65% of the city’s homes remain uninhabitable. Northrop Grumman Ship Systems’ facility in Pascagoula, which before Katrina employed 19,800 people, was all but obliterated.
Hurricane Katrina wiped out the entire Gulf Coast of Mississippi. The scale of the destruction is difficult to comprehend. All along the coast—mile after mile—just about anything that was there is now gone.
But this is only part of the story. According to the National Hurricane Center, the surge “penetrated at least six miles inland in many portions of coastal Mississippi and up to 12 miles inland along bays and rivers. The surge crossed Interstate 10 in many locations.” Interstate 10 runs east-west, four miles or more north of coastal Highway 90.
Gayle Tart’s brother Sam and his son John died in Pass Christian during the hurricane, on John’s second birthday. Tart explained that father and son had drowned inside their own home.
“Water never came down there [before Katrina]. That’s across the track. [With Katrina] that water came in and that water went out, and the velocity was unbelievable,” Tart said. “The first boundary was the beach and the next boundary was the highway. The day after the storm, you saw neither—no beach and no highway.”
Knowing what we know from three years ago, it is somewhat encouraging to hear that citywide evacuations are underway in New Olreans.
“I am strongly, strongly encouraging everyone in the city to evacuate,” Mayor C. Ray Nagin said in a news conference Saturday afternoon. “Start the process now. Go north if you can because the storm may continue to turn a little bit west.”
Mr. Nagin said that if the hurricane continues on its current path, a mandatory evacuation will be implented — probably about 8 a.m. Sunday.
Hotels were closing, and the sound of boards being hammered over windows could be heard. The state police on Saturday morning reported moderately heavy traffic on a principal highway north, Interstate 55, and a voluntary city-organized evacuation plan for the poor, elderly and sick — the principal victims in Hurricane Katrina — was in full swing.
Dozens waited outside for buses at 17 collection points all over the city to take them to the Union Passenger Terminal, the train station downtown. From there they will be taken by bus and train to cities in north Louisiana — Shreveport, Alexandria and Monroe — and to Memphis. They clutched duffle bags, plastic shopping sacks, small children and overstuffed suitcases, vowing to avoid at all costs the still-vivid nightmare of Katrina.
The buses arrived promptly at 8 a.m. — a sharp contrast to the chaos and disorganization of three years ago, when the only plan was to jam thousands of people without cars into the Superdome and let others fend for themselves.
“I refuse to go through that again,” said Roxanne Clayton, a photo technician at Walgreens, who was waiting in the Irish Channel neighborhood with her teenage son and 10-year-old daughter. She recalled being stuck in her attic for two days during Hurricane Katrina. “I’d rather play it safe than sorry, because I know what sorry feels like,” Ms. Clayton said.
A neighbor from the larger houses up Louisiana Avenue brought doughnuts for those patiently waiting, and many said they were simply grateful for the ride out of town.
In the Tremé neighborhood, bordering the French Quarter, large families without cars, and some who were simply homeless, waited for buses that quickly filled. “If you’ve been through Katrina, it’s time for you to go,” said Marion Colbert, a powder room attendant at a French Quarter restaurant for more than three decades. “You never know about these storms if you’ve been living in the city 80 years.”
In the Central City section, families, elderly men and the visibly infirm — people in wheelchairs and with canes — lined the sidewalk along Dryades Street for half a long block. “After going through Katrina, that ain’t no joke,” said Jody Anderson, who spent seven days in the Superdome. “It’s not worth it, trying to stay,” said Ms. Anderson, an unemployed former cashier….
State officials prepared an elaborate system of contraflow lanes on interstate and federal highways leading out of southern Louisiana, staging the plans so that those farthest south could exit first. In St. Bernard Parish, just east of New Orleans, officials ordered a mandatory evacuation beginning at 4 p.m. Saturday, warning residents that curfews would be enforced. The parish was one of the hardest hit in Hurricane Katrina, and many of its residents never returned.
Yet not everyone is rushing to leave:
Still, there were few signs of a mass exodus, though gasoline stations were crowded. With forecasters not predicting a direct hit on New Orleans, some here had made the decision to stay. “My sense from talking to citizens is that they are either in an extreme state of ‘anxious to leave,’ or they’re just tired and ‘I don’t want to be bothered,’ ” Mayor Nagin told reporters late Friday.
Hmmm. Tired and not wanting to be bothered. Maybe. But Mayor Nagin neglected to mention other anxieties that might make it difficult to evacuate. I’m sure that Beth Basile from St. Bernard Parish is not alone in her worry:
“If it’s like Katrina, they might not let us back,” says the 52-year-old old Wal-Mart cashier, her eyes baggy and smudged with worry. “They might put a fence around the whole parish and say, `Go away.’”In places like St. Bernard, the Lower 9th Ward, and trailer parks along the Gulf Coast, those still reeling from Katrina are now the most vulnerable to Hurricane Gustav.
I’m wondering what is being done to reassure evacuees that their return home is guaranteed. I’m also wondering why Mississippi, which may yet again be the state hit by the eye of the storm, is not already mobilizing on the same scale as Louisiana.
George Bush has declared a state of emergency in Mississippi, as requested by the state’s governor, Haley Barbour. So far mandatory evacuations are only directed at the most vulnerable Mississippi residents, who are still living in FEMA trailers, Katrina cottages and in low lying areas.
In Harrison and Hancock counties, evacuations of residents from trailers and cottages will begin Sunday morning and they will be bused north to Jackson. Because there are fewer trailers and enough shelters in Jackson County, residents of trailers and cottages there won’t be evacuated until Monday, Barbour said. Residents in low-lying areas and anyone who signed up for the state evacuation plan also will be moved out beginning Sunday morning.
These most vulnerable people should for sure be evacuated. But the people Barbour is making sure to evacuate are the same people he has been tacitly telling to go to hell while he spends CDBG money, intended to alleviate their homelessness, on other things like a $600 million port expansion expansion scheme. Barbour has realized since at least 2006, that it would be a public relations disaster for him if the world watched as another hurricane washed these same neglected Mississippi residents into the Gulf of Mexico.Even if you are not as cynical about Barbour as I am, remember: when Katrina hit Mississippi, flooding devastated communities ten miles inland. I saw the destruction with my own eyes and talked to people whose loved ones drowned inside their own houses. But Barbour and Homeland Security’s Michael Chertoff are not rushing make sure Mississippians will be safe.
“We have not made a decision for any sort of mass evacuations,” said Barbour….
“We’re trying not to pull the trigger too quickly on evacuations,” Chertoff said. “There may be some shifting in the direction of the storm,” and the other officials urged residents to take personal responsibility for their safety by getting together food, water, first aid kits, flashlights and radios.
Since I started writing this post earlier today, Mayor Nagin has issued a mandator evacuation order for New Orleans. As the people of New Orleans once again flee a deadly storm, they can at least feel reassured that the local, state and federal authorities they have taken measures to ensure that the city is not again destroyed by flooding—actually just to make sure that some parts of the city are not again wrecked by flooding.
[F]loodgates have been constructed at the end of city drainage canals leading to Lake Pontchartrain, the principal conduits for the fateful surge during Hurricane Katrina. Still, there is no such arrangement on the Industrial Canal, the surge from which destroyed the still-empty Lower Ninth Ward.
Gustav may soon be a Category 5 storm. Pray for the people of the Gulf Coast.
—
Photo credit: Karen Apricot.
§ Posted by Benjamin T. Greenberg on August 30, 2008 at 9:06 pm
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