I went to Gulfport/Biloxi/Pascagoula Mississippi today DAMN!

[moobu2]

The Mississippi Gulf coast is ruined, Just completely ruined. Everything and I mean everything is dead. All those beautiful ancient Live Oak tree’s along the coast, gone. It looks like most everything the salt water touched died. One house after the other collapsed, caved in torn to pieces, from Alabama on west as far as I could go. The flood waters reach very far inland in Pascagoula, way further than I could have imagined. House after house has huge piles of furniture, refrigerators, washing machines, carpet and everything piled up everywhere all over everywhere. I happened to drive down this road where they were hauling household debris and there were mountains of the above mentioned debris as far as I could see…It’s just incredible, I cant imagine what Waveland and pass Christian look like if there's anything left standing.

I saw several signs saying "NO FEMA" and others that said "please come FEMA", don’t know what they meant. I saw disaster distribution sites that looked ransacked, boxes and cloths everywhere with people searching through the stuff. people living in small tents and obviously camping out around their torn up homes. They did have power in Pascagoula in a few places.

It brought tears to my eye's seeing it in person, I'm telling you..Those poor, poor people.

[HeeBGBz]

1. It's an eye-opener and a jaw dropper

At least, it was for me.

[kentuck]

2. Just curious.....did these areas have "Spanish moss" in the trees??

I have a theory about Spanish moss. It is a warning.

[moobu2]

3. I really didnt notice, sorry

[kentuck]

5. I saw some of that area on the TV....

It was the worst natural disaster I have ever seen. We cannot know what those people are experiencing at this moment. It is very sad.

[HeeBGBz]

7. Used to. Here's an example of what's left of that.

.html

These all had Spanish Moss on them before the storm.

[Alamom]

8. Yes, Spanish Moss could be seen in areas from Mobile to NOLA

n/t

[DoYouEverWonder]

11. What is your theory about Spanish moss?

My trees are full of the stuff so I was curious?

[kentuck]

13. only a theory...

But I believe the moss is a sign to get your ass out when there is a hurricane warning. It's beautiful but it is a danger warning. It's probably been there for hundreds of years - since the last great hurricane...

[jobycom]

16. The last great hurricane in Mississippi was in 69, and there have been

other bad ones since then. Elena was in 86.

[DoYouEverWonder]

17. Well, hate to blow your theory

but even after 2 hurricanes that came through here last year and tons of moss that came down, the trees are still full. The stuff falls down all the time but there is a never ending supply it seems.

One amazing thing is that most of the standing trees that look dead from Katrina, will probably be back to normal in a year or two. That's what happened after Andrew, there wasn't a leaf left on anything and within a few years you would never know that they had been denuded by a hurricane.

[bluestateguy]

4. I'm starting to think Mississippi isn't getting enough media coverage

There's a lot of poor people there too.

[HeeBGBz]

9. People of Mississippi been thinkin that for a while

Mississippi got the full brunt of the storm. New Orleans is underwater, the Mississippi coast was flattened.

[Alamom]

6. So sorry & sad..........the entire Gulf Coast was beautiful

I Lived on the coast for several years.....Mobile Bay. (Belle Fontaine)
We visited the Florida Panhandle beaches, Mississippi Coast and NOLA many times.

I have heard from friends in Mobile ....Dauphin Island, Bayou La Batre and Coden are just about gone.

They tell me there has been very little help at all.

This is very sad indeed.

[Eurobabe]

10. Entrance right....RITA!

Heading over FL in a few days and smack into the Gulf. When will it end??

[Up2Late]

12. Lot's of picture of the destruction at the Sun-Herald .com, here's a link

http://www.sunherald.com/mld/sunherald

[jobycom]

14. It's only mostly dead. But for the record, west of GP is much worse.

North of I-10 is in great shape, for the most part. A lot of damaged homes, but most businesses and homes survived. Even a ways south of I-10 there is much left. The coast is wiped out, but it will return.

East of Gulfport was hit hardest. The entire city of Waveland was flattened, for several miles inland. The water hit the I-10 overpass over Highway 603 about fifteen feet high, and that's five or six miles inland. That was the worst part of the storm, plus the land is low there because of the bayous and the bay. A lot of homes survived because they are on pylons, but even the houses twelve feet up were covered in water.

Very little of Waveland survived. Pearlington was hit worse--they claim every house is uninhabitable. Bay St. Louis was destroyed, though inland there are still some houses. Pass Christian they say is 70% destroyed. I have a friend who lives inland in Pass Christian, and he had water to the back of his property. Long Beach suffered similar damage. Cat Island off the coast of Long Beach had debris in the trees 25 feet up, meaing a wall of water twenty-five foot high crossed the island. Some of the homes on the coast in Pass Christian actually survived, and it may have been because of the island breaking the wave a little.

Despite all that, things are still there. It's all covered in mud, but that will dry up and wash away. The houses will be rebuilt, businesses will re-open. People will always want to live on the beach.

And the casino hotels did okay, which not only means the casinos can rebuild, but that the hotels can be used as a model to make better buildings next time.

It's bad. It's not fatal.

[GarySeven]

15. FEMA has utterly abandoned Biloxi, Gulfport, etc.

And it's all the MSM's fault. So much attention has been focused on NOLA that most Americans think that it was the only place hit. There has never been such a large amount of property so utterly devastated as has the Ala. - Miss. Gulf coast. As the poster says, it has been utterly ruined. Yet there is NO sign of FEMA anywhere. Truck after truck of relief convoys are roaring through these towns on their way to New Orleans without stopping. I have read stories of people in Biloxi and Gulfport chasing down Red Cross vehicles and forcing them off the road, demanding the drivers unload their supplies then and there. The reason why no one has heard about this is that all the communications infrastructure has been destroyed. No one is able to call the outside world to make their plight known. All the big-time MSM reporters are holed up in New Orleans (the bars and strip clubs are all open in the French Quarter) but even if those reporters wanted to go beyond New Orleans they couldn't; federal troops have sealed NOLA off from the rest of the world. Please, if you have any way of getting the word out please, please, please tell some key players to come and help these people. What food there is is being dropped of at the few isolated places where electricity is found, but most people can't get to the food - they don't have any cars, any gas to put in them, or the roads are still blocked preventing access. These people need HELP!

[Up2Late]

18. Well maybe you should tell the Mississippi Governor to stop talking like..

this, this is from the September 4, 2005 "Meet the Press," he came on right after the St. Bernard President made is tearful plea for help:

<http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9179790>

MR. RUSSERT:...
...Governor Barbour, can you bring our audience up to date on what is happening in your state, how many deaths have you experienced and what do you see playing out over the next couple days?

GOV. HALEY BARBOUR, (R-MS): Well, we were ground zero of the worst natural disaster ever to hit the United States. And it's not just a calamity on our Gulf Coast, which is decimated, I mean, destroyed, all the infrastructure overwhelmed. We have damage 150 miles inland. We have 100 miles inland, 12 deaths from winds over 110 miles an hour.

Saturday night before this storm hit, the head of the National Hurricane Center called me and said, "Governor, this is going to be like Camille." I said, "Well, start telling people it's going to be like Camille," because Camille is the benchmark for how bad--it's the worst hurricane that ever hit America, it happened to hit Pass Christian, Mississippi. Well, Tim, Katrina was worse than Camille. It was worse than Camille in size. It was worse than Camille in damage. And so we've had a terrible, grievous blow struck us.

But my experience is very different from Louisiana, apparently. I don't know anything about Louisiana. Over here, we had the Coast Guard in Monday night. They took 1,700 people off the roofs of houses with guys hanging off of helicopters to get them. They sent us a million meals last night because we'd eaten everything through. Everything hasn't been perfect here, by any stretch of the imagination, Tim. But the federal government has been good partners to us. They've tried hard. Our people have tried hard. Firemen and policemen and emergency medical people, National Guard, highway patrolmen working virtually around the clock, sleeping in their cars when they could sleep. And we've made progress every day.

But should I--we haven't made as much progress as I want any day. And to be honest, we won't make as much progress as I want any day because the devastation we're dealing with is unimaginable, not just unprecedented. It's unimaginable.

(clip)

MR. RUSSERT: Governor, how many people do you think have died in the state of Mississippi?

GOV. BARBOUR: Well, the official death toll is 160-something. And with the debris, Tim, that we have on the coast, which in many areas is six, eight, 10 feet tall, and because some people didn't evacuate, I think that toll will go up. I can't tell you how much, but we have so many people on the coast, they boarded up for Ivan, evacuated, nothing happened. Boarded up for Dennis, evacuated, nothing happened. Then they said, you know, "Where I am was OK for Camille." Nobody ever imagined something worse than Camille. And we have a lot of people...

MR. RUSSERT: Right.

GOV. BARBOUR: ...who may have died because they didn't believe anything could be worse than Camille. <http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9179790>