Gulf Coast

If you read my entry for New Orleans, and saw the tidal wave shot from Bay St Louise, that is where this picture was taken from. Everything was destroyed! This ship (about 45 feet long) was on the side of the road, and I could not see the water from here. Highway 90 parallels the coast along Mississippi, and goes through Bay St Louis. Unfortunately, Katrina destroyed many of the bridges that were in her path (and she made landfall in Waveland, just south of Bay St. Louis and about 50 miles NE from New Orleans). Our route to Biloxi required a few detours around bays without bridges.

We traveled through Gulfport on our way to Biloxi. Both of these cities are right on the beach; which is beautiful, with perfect white sand. But, when you turn around, with your back to the water and these pristine beaches (which were all closed due to pollution), you realize that almost every structure was destroyed.

This is a Comfort Inn hotel of about 300 rooms. Completely destroyed with no visible signs of any reconstruction work.

The for sale sign out front specifies: As is, where is, make offer. There are a lot of for sale signs.

The distance between Gulfport and Biloxi is about 15 miles. The entire area looks like war pictures from Iraq. Less than 5% of the structures remain. Most of the buildings were reduced to rubble.

This area looks like total destruction. What I imagine the aftermath of a powerful hurricane, or a nuclear explosion, would look like. New Orleans was very different. While the economic destruction was huge, the visual effects do not appear as dramatic (not to down play it). In New Orleans, many structures were left standing. But they marinated in a toxic stew of petroleum, poisons, rotting flesh, and human feces for up to 2 weeks: in many cases necessitating complete demolition of the structures.

All Katrina left the people on the coast of Mississippi in many cases was rubble to clean up.

I think we have seen enough hurricane destruction. We are off to Florida.