Hurricane Katrina Aftermath

I love a good storm, but this one.... no, none of us liked this one...

Hurricane Katrina

We are broken, wishing that what we are seeing is unreal. Wishing that they weren't telling us that they keep finding bodies, wishing that houses were still standing, and roads were already fixed. We are wishing the water would recede. We wish that the curfews would lift and that stores would open. We wish we could get gas. We wish that the businesses we enjoyed and places that we loved have not been taken from us.

At home, we feel that we weathered the storm pretty well. We lost some branches, the river flooded (Backwards! A very strange site, to see the river flow upstream, because of the storm surge, which is very much like a tsunami-type flood), and we did have hurricane-force winds. Tim can't go to work since he works on the beach, which is now covered in sand and floods. But we fared worse with a job loss last August (our sole income), with Hurricane Ivan last September, with the record flood in April, with Tropical Storms Arlene and Cindy in June, and with Hurricane Dennis last month. With all of that experience behind us, we feel that we did fine with Hurricane Katrina. Or maybe we're just numb.

Even in our town, others were not so blessed. Homes just five miles away are still completely covered in water. A church lost its roof. The farmer a quarter mile away lost huge portions of his barn. The main employer in town, The Grande Hotel of Pointe Clear, has had such major damage from flooding, that its 1,000 employees will be jobless, which impacts the community financially in days to come.

In our county, businesses are slowly opening. Today, as power slowly turned on, there were a few gas stations open. The homes are starting to get power turned on. Our house does not yet have power, so this afternoon, we fled 50 miles and used up precious gas to get to my parents' home in Florida. At home, we were losing all of our freezer and fridge food (something we can't afford) without electricity, and it was 94 degrees (all humid!) today - a hot day to not have air conditioning. I don't mind homesteading it a bit, but not in such heat with four little ones.

We cannot believe that only seven days ago, Katrina was just another unnamed tidal wave in the Atlantic. We can't believe that the water rose high enough to cause record flooding in nearby Mobile, Alabama, one of America's oldest cities. In Bayou La Batre, Alabama, the place where Forrest Gump finally got his shrimp boat, survivors are searching through the debris. Toady, a shrimper was helping another man search through the rubble. He was missing his brother. Dauphin Island, Alabama had miles of beach wiped off the map. A woman found out that the home that has been in her family for 47 years is gone now. Vanished. Others will find the same. Only 1 in 10 homes is still standing on that island. On the Mississippi coast, they are finding homes that look like matchsticks, and bodies in the debris. A five-year-old boy was standing in the debris, lost. Someone tried to help him, but the boy didn't know his parents name or his address. He did know his new teacher's name. Somehow, through that connection, they figured out where the little boy lived. When they reached the rubble of his home, they found his parents were dead. In New Orleans, the water keeps flowing. The city that we all love, the most unique city in all of America, with a deep history and a beautiful culture, is drowning. Under Interstate overpasses, hundreds of people are sleeping tonight. Like you'd see a homeless person do. Which is what they are now. They could not evacuate, many of them. They didn't have the money, or the transportation, or the strength. Now they are under an overpass, getting bitten by mosquitoes and trying to bear with the heat and the humidity. And the fear.

Evacuees from Mississippi and Louisiana are here, thousands of them, in South Alabama and North Florida. Our counties are trying to figure out what to do with them. There is not electricity in our areas, and there are not many volunteers since much of our area evacuated, too. But the evacuees can't get enough gas to go on down the road. Some of them stop at the one open gas station, and say, "We just can't put the children through this any more. Please find us somewhere to stay." The news reporters are being offered a handful of hundred dollar bills for a tank of gas. The hotels are filled to capacity for those who can afford to pay. Our civic centers are opening tonight for weary travelers. The Red Cross is opening shelters. On one radio station this morning, caller after caller offered their home, their living room, an extra bedroom, and even a corner of a FEMA trailer, to the evacuees.

We all went through Hurricane Ivan last September. We know how the refugees feel, so our desire to be generous is great. But, then again, maybe we don't know how they feel . We were able to get back to our hometown within 4 days of the storm. We only lost a couple dozen people in the storm. These refugees don't know when they will be able to return. Their devastation is worse than ours. Their body count is highter. The refugees are weary. They are worried about their homes. They are worried about their families and their neighbors, who stayed in the danger zones. We have to help them. And we will.

by Lori Seaborg

Mobile, Alabama:
Our local news runs 24/7, trying to keep us updated on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. You can watch live streaming video online.

New Orleans, Louisiana:
For more information on New Orleans and photos, visit this site.

Mississippi Gulf Coast:
You won't believe these pictures. This is where the eye of Hurricane Katrina hit, after it tapped the tip of Louisiana. I can't believe this happened in our country, much less in an area I know very well. This area of Mississippi was just beautiful, with historical plantation homes lined along the waterfront, live oaks in the front yards. It was a military area, home of the Hurricane Hunters (see my last post). It was also the home of Methuselah, the oldest live oak in America, believed to have been 2000 years old, and a survivor of Hurricane Camille in 1969. I don't know if the oak still stands.