Jackson Free Press

I went to The Coast today. In my grown up job I was asked to be part of a group that went down and conducted coping groups with survivors of Katrina.

After the groups we toured Waveland, Pass Christian, Bay St. Louis, and Gulfport. I say "toured". We drove thru debri laden roads and looked at what was left. It wasn't much of anything. Whole towns. Just gone. Blocks of NOTHING but boards and bizarre piles of mismatched items. Two months later.

It's just like they said, when you get over the railroad tracks a mile from the beach there isn't anything there. Just the sound of really loud crickets. Its strange how when you first see it, you don't really see it because you expected the mess to be bigger. There just isn't stuff THERE that used to be there.

People have spray painted their phone numbers and addresses on plywood with messages like "We are safe" "WE MADE IT!!" "We are at (insert address)" . I can't explain to you how perfectly bizarre it is to see abandoned cars on their side in ditches...their doors laying open. Or, rather...some laying on top of boats that are then laying on top of trees.

Baby dolls hanging in TREES.

It looks like war. It looks like someone took a big spoon and stirred up the coast then threw the contents back down to Earth. It was macabre.

The Salvation Army was handing out meals from a trailer parked at a convience store that was boarded up. People were pulling in every few seconds, loading up with plates, and heading out.

People are living in tents they have made into "homes" on their property. Some of them sitting on empty concrete slabs with concrete steps still leading into some nonexistant door.

The stories were worse. Grown men said they were scared. They cried. Said the water was up to their neck in the house, deeper outside. Bubbling thru cracks in the floors with nowhere to go but up. Being responsible for elderly people. Pulling people out of windows. Feeling helpless. The hungry dogs on the streets who started biting people four days after the storm. Watching windows breathe and explode.

Jobs are available at every establishment. They all have signs saying the same thing "flexible hours and paid weekly". Fast food places still don't have their full menus. Signs are stuck on the poles outside listing what they aren't serving.

They also answer already asked questions...
"We have no ice to sell."

NOTHING is open five miles from the beach. I can't figure out where the people on the street were going...except to get out. Any large shopping center still has an army encampment in the parking lot. There is trash EVERY WHERE. Boxes piled up where they distributed food. Just trash.

There are guardrails crumpled up like pieces of paper on the side of the road.

The most interesting thing...and I saw it more than once...would be a roof sitting on the ground where a house used to be. There was no house. There wasn't even debris that looked like it USED to be a house. There was just a roof that looked as if it was ever-so-gently lifted up, the house plucked from underneath it, and then placed gently down on the ground. The house next door would be completely intact and just missing a few shingles.

Empty lots with perfect white picket fences still surrounding them. Flowers still in the flower beds. But, NO HOUSE. Bizarre. Just completely bizarre.

I realized that there will never be a picture that will be able to show this.
There will never be a picture that will be able to tell this story.

*I* will never be able to tell this story.

The pure terror that still hangs in the air around that place prevents it.