Delayed posting from September 13

Pearlington, Mississippi
September 13, 2005

The road off the freeway leading to Pearlington is littered with the shattered vehicles and broken dreams of the people of this bayou town. Hundreds of cars and trucks lie akimbo in the ditches; some nose down in the water, some on their roofs, all broken and abandoned. One can only wonder about the fate of their passengers. When Katrina hit this Gulf coast town, only some of its citizens had already been evacuated. When they returned a week later, there was nothing to return to. Everything had been destroyed. Not one building had been left undamaged, not one tree still stood tall.

All along the Gulf, Katrina hit with a force unimaginable. The damage is so extensive that it has forever changed the face of this part of the world. Hundreds of thousands of trees, maybe millions, are destroyed. The Army Corps of Engineers has pushed the deadfall off the roads, but many still teeter threateningly over the traffic below. Highway and street signs are either gone, or twisted and bent beyond repair. Entire buildings are missing from their footings. There are boats on the shoulders of the roads and cars in the bayou. I even saw a sailboat wrapped almost intact around a tree, like a living mast.

The winds and rains were bad enough. When the surge came, it filled Pearlington with twelve feet of water. Anything still salvageable was now lost. The high water mark can easily be seen on the backboard behind the basketball net and around the edges of the block gymnasium in which an Aid Centre has been set up. It’s the only building still standing, that and the attached elementary school, The windows were broken and all the desks and lockers washed back out to sea with the retreating tide.

When I arrived early this morning, everything was complete pandemonium. FEMA and the Walton County Works Department (from Florida) had only made it to this little town on Sunday and aid was starting to arrive by the truckload from all over the south. All 600 residents desperately needed food, clothing, baby supplies and water. Nothing is working in the town; no water, toilets, power, phones nor gas. Nothing except a few volunteer aid workers, Sheriffs Deputies, Police officers and fire fighters from four states, Red Cross people who have defected from an organization clearly not working as it should….and one crazy Canadian.

By noon we were getting organized. I had already been promoted several times and now ran the check-in desk to ensure everyone got what they needed. I made lists of people wanting generators and chain saws – should they ever arrive. But there are plenty of Coleman cots, a few tents (which go quickly), some tarps and plastic and skids of canned goods and sundries that will have to see these people through for a while yet. There is no word of their future, just rumours….a tent town….a trailer town….relocation. No one knows. FEMA and others are busy mucking a foot of residual mud and mould out of the main school into a shelter for 100 or so of the luckier ones. There simply is nowhere else at the moment to put the rest.

Angel Monroe is filling a box with the things her family needs. She sees her neighbour and they hug each other. She had invited her neighbour over the week before the storm hit. Gussie “came over” all right – her house currently rests atop Angel’s. The neighbour’s house across the street is in their back yard. Angel’s 10-year-old daughter Amber tells me their deck is about a mile away, in the bayou. Four-year-old Haley is letting me take her around, a Barbie baby in a carrier firmly attached to her back. She sees a small My Little Pony plastic tricycle and her face lights up. We finish filling her pockets with gum and donated suckers, me pushing her Pony. I give her my Eagle Wishing Stone from the Kokopelli Trail Quest last summer. I tell her to hold it close and it will make her feel better. She makes a wish, but doesn’t share it. A good thing for me, I’m sure. When she leaves with her Grandma, she shoots me a radiant smile, her little fist wrapped around the wishing stone in the pocket of her donated jean shorts.

The Salvation Army is here with a big trailer and are feeding all, including me. It’s 101 degrees outside, hotter by far in the Aid Centre. Finally, a team of men from the Walton County Public Works Dept. in Florida rigs our only generator and gets a big fan moving some air. Angel is back, looking for a tent big enough for her family. There aren’t any. A lady who shattered her leg escaping is waiting for the only doctor and crying softly. She refuses my offer to help. So I go about the business of doing what I can, until I am so tired I can barely stand.

There are no hotel rooms for a radius of 200 miles. They are all booked by aid workers and their organizations and most for the next six months. I make the mistake of leaving the grounds to get gas and to look for a non-existent room. When I return, it is after 8:00 p.m. and I am stopped at a checkpoint by State troopers, who refuse me entry to the area. There is a curfew I didn’t know about. My plan to camp beside the school crashes. I drive up the road apiece and find a National Guard bivouac. They invite me to pitch my tent in the field beside their motor pool. As I am doing so, two Sergeants come over to tell me there are copperhead rattlers in the area, but only a few hundred yards down the field, not here.

I make my bed up in the back of the truck. It’s past midnight and its still 82 degrees outside, hotter in the truck. If I roll down the windows, I am devoured by mosquitos. So here I am, the portable on my lap in the front seat, recording my day. The computer is plugged into the inverter I brought and the engine is running with the air conditioning on. I hope I sleep somehow. Tomorrow is another day….

If my heart had wings, I would fly out over the Gulf of Mexico and stir up a storm of hope and compassion for the resilient people of Pearlington, Mississippi. Especially for Haley.

Good night.