Current mood:

busy

The Demon Storm
It has now been one year since The Demon Storm came to town and, somehow, we are still here. Most of the rubble and debris have been cleared from the land, and empty house lots with nothing more than slabs or piers on them serve to remind us of the things that used to be. Monetary relief has been slow to arrive and the insurance companies are good at excuses, so homes partially boarded up and abandoned sit and deteriorate further. There are three such places on my street alone.

My trip to work each day takes me along the Beach Road, Highway 90, which shows serious evidence of the thrashing that it took 12 months ago. Concrete slabs that were washed out when the 30 foot storm surge came ashore have been repaired, but the repairs consist of asphalt poured into the gaps. The heat and traffic causes the relatively soft patches to sink, making for some real front-end killers along the way. Imagine hitting a 3 inch curb with a slight ramp on it while travelling 50 or 55 mph. The bump is enough to jar your teeth out of your head, and I have already needed to get a front end alignment because of them. Since the only alternative is to drive around by the interstate, a detour that adds 20 minutes to the trip, I still take that route to work. Despite Hwy. 90's problems, it is still the better alternative.

So what am I passing along this route these days? Well, there is nothing to speak of in Long Beach. Two or three homes are being rebuilt along the water, but it seems that people are either too afraid to build back, or are still waiting on checks from FEMA and the insurance companies. Alongside the vacant slabs, ruined and abandoned swimming pools sit filled with stale water. They are easy to find now, since the crude fences erected to keep people from falling into them are becoming overrun with creeping vines and other vegetation. The Long Beach Yacht Club is housed in a temporary structure that looks like a triple-wide trailer. I have seen little evidence of a rebuilding effort in the marina. None of the commercial properties along Hwy. 90 have been rebuilt. USM Gulf Park is still a mess, with crushed and gutted structures dotting the once well groomed campus. Leaving Long Beach, West Gulfport is still mostly empty as well. The land where thousands of hunks of rotting chicken and pork recently lay is still vacant, save for the FEMA trailer park on Broad Avenue, a rocks toss from the water. As you enter Gulfport proper, the hulking remains of the Grand Casino Hotel on the beach looks even more forlorn today than it did one year ago. At night, lights that have been burning since power was returned after the storm glow through dirty and broken windows, and peer around tattered pieces of plywood used to patch huge holes in the structure. The First Baptist Church of Gulfport has been demolished, but the old Harrison County Library still stands, with bleached looking books stacked in front of a broken upstairs window.

Here and there people are rebuilding, but the going is slow, and it is mostly those with pockets deep enough to front the money for their own recovery, in hopes that one day they will get some of it back. At this rate, it will be many years, possibly a decade, before The Coast is anywhere near as robust as it was last summer, before the Demon Storm came to kill paradise.

I have said it many times: we were extremely fortunate. All that happened to us was a few boards got blown off the back of the house and an odd tool here and there got wet. The loss of our shed has been a major problem for storage, but we got the merest of kisses from The Demon Storm, when you consider where we live, and how close the destructive floodwaters came to us. Our biggest problem in the 12 months since the storm has been the heavy-handed and disrespectful manner in which we, as law abiding, property owning citizens of our community, were treated by authority figures and out of town police officers. It is a pity that giving some men a badge and a tazer can turn them instantly into ignorant assholes, and it gives good police who are just trying to keep sanity at a time of incredible insanity a bad name. I think that bringing in out of town cops to patrol the communities was a major mistake, and should not be repeated.

The other problem was also a human one. The decision to ring our entire community south of the tracks with concertina wire for 4 months bordered on inhumane for those of us trying to resume our normal lives, and to the National Guard Troops forced to man the checkpoints. I agree that, at first, it was incredibly dangerous down there and it needed to be guarded. But after a couple of months, those restrictions could have and should have been relaxed. By then, those who could return had returned. There was nothing worth taking in the homes that were vacant. It was among the most nightmarish elements of the whole misadventure.

I believe the worst is over now and everyone who can is picking up the pieces, but it will be a long time before we can use the word "normal" to describe this area. Even then, it will never be the same. A new era of the Mississippi Gulf Coast is about to be born.