Just rode down Biloxi Beach..

[vital]

Just remember what you saw is 6 months after the storm! Can you imagine what it looked like the day after? The Clarion-Ledger is the newspaper in Jackson, MS and has a book of photographs and stories from the storm. You can go to their website and order it. Very good as far as the quality, of course sad b/c of the content.

 

[agnes!]

The apocalyptic level of destruction that survivors & their communites have endured is beyond words.

AITW, the main building in that first picture has a profile that looks like it might be some type of theatre/auditorium.

agnes!
PS - People are still missing, by the way, including (I think) about 80 children.

 

[DVC Sadie]

So glad to know your grandparents' graves were spared amongst the chaos.

I think that first pic you posted is (was) a VA hospital or a naval hospital.

LaLa, you are correct. The first picture was one the VA building and parking. We are still digging out the debris by our house. The bulldozers were there last week to remove a whole house from the middle of our street.

 

[Am_I_There_Yet]

All I can say, is I have a whole new respect for the people who've had to endure these hurricanes.

After we left Biloxi, we made our way to Destin, which is where I used to live. Driving through Pensacola, it was the same thing we saw last December. Blue tarps. They're still dealing with the effects of Ivan! Then on the way home from Orlando, we drove through Orange, Texas (in the daylight - it was dark on our way down) and we saw lots of damage from Rita!

Here, we haven't had a hurricane since 1982. It's scary, because we know our time is coming. We had a close call with Rita and seeing the chaos that caused... well, I can only imagine if it had hit here, with all those people stuck on our freeways.

 

[pigget74]

On MArch 17th my family and I made a loop to see the damage of the storm. My youngest was born 2 weeks after the storm and we had just gotten power the night before we came home from the hospital. This trip was not only for me, but to give my older kids more of a sense of what had happend. They knew what we went through, but couldn't really comprehend what other cities went through from what little we were able to see of the outside world. As we drove towards New Orleans my husband and I bacme quite as we both thought about what had taken place in the past 6 months. The news showed you sections, but the devastation went on for miles and miles. My kids were amazed at how many houses were under water and for how many miles it acutally went. They were more amazed at how much time had passed and it still looks as if the storm went by last week. From there we went to Waveland, Bay St., Pass Christian, Gulfport, and Biloxi. I times I caught myself crying as I saw the total destruction. My grandmother lived in Biloxi so as a child I visited a lot--the devastation is just hard to picture. The tv did not show an accurate picture of the coastal areas. We even drove through some neighborhoods and the travel trailers were all lined up and that was all they had. That hit home to my kids. As we drove down the beach it was shocking to look out in the water and still see trees and appiliances along the waters edge. Articles were in the tops of trees---
Sorry that it is choppy--just hard to get down what it was really like.