Gulfport, Mississippi (again)

Back in February, I was passing through Gulfport, MS. I described some of the devastation I saw from Hurricane Katrina, and indicated how remarkable it was that the devastation remained six months after the disaster had occurred. I would have thought that they would have cleaned up most of the debris and demolished the dangerous buildings before then.

I was in Gulfport again a couple of weeks ago, and this time I brought my camera, to take pictures. Here goes:

As one of my acquaintances told me, What's more important than what you see, is what you don't see. If you look closely at the picture, you'll not see the houses and stores that were here once. You might see their foundations; I'm not sure if they'll appear in the photo. Clicking on the photo should give you more detail, but I'm not sure.

All these months after the hurricane, debris still hangs from trees along the coast, and trash is strewn across the ground. I want to emphasize that the cause for this isn't a lack of effort to clean things up. The devastation is simply overwhelming. Drive sixty miles inland, and you will see buildings with roof damage. A little closer to shore, and you can see road crews cutting trees that the winds twisted, snapped, and tore from the ground. Abandoned buildings dot the side of road. These were lively homes and thriving businesses once; all that remains now are darkened shells, collapsed roofs, and shattered walls.

As I had mentioned before, the First Baptist Church in Gulfport. It's in worse disrepair now than when I saw it in February. As I wrote then, you can see clear through the walls parallel to the shore. However, the walls perpendicular to the shore appear to be collapsing, also. I don't think this is due to demolition work; besides not seeing anyone working there, I don't recall ever seeing someone demolish a building by removing bricks from the bottom up.