One Year

(Click on photos to enlarge)

Today I sit in the same chair as I did a year ago, at the same desk as a year ago, looking at many of the same images on the same computer screen as I did a year ago. So much is the same. So much is different.

I started this blog a month or so before Katrina to just basically complain about missing Vegas, and how I had no trips planned to Sin City in the near future. My yearly pilgrimage was being replaced by a cruise instead. I was excited for the cruise, which left from New Orleans, because 90% of my time on the ship was going to be dedicated to poker....but I still longed for the desert.

When Katrina crashed ashore a lot of things changed. The first way it affected me personally was my cruise being moved to Galveston. Later on Rita blew into town there and completely cancelled my cruise, which let me reschedule my vacation and play in the 05 Winter Classic in Vegas.

The biggest change for me though was a couple months later when I traveled down to Long Beach, MS (between Gulfport and Bay St Louis/Waveland) which was one of the areas hardest hit by the storm. My week of volunteer work down there is something that will stay with me forever. It was a very moving experience, but at the same time it's something I've found difficult to discuss unless I'm talking to someone else who was on our trip, or at least one similar to it.

Having seen a lot of coverage from the affected areas in the weeks leading up to my trip, I had some expectation of what we'd see down there, but for the most part I tried to keep my mind open because I truly did not know what to expect. The reality of it all set in about 100 miles from the coast when we began to see wind and tornado damage here and there as we drove down. If some areas this far inland were messed up, what was it going to look like when we got to the coast?

We had our answer soon enough. We rolled through mile after mile of wind and flood damage on our way into Long Beach. By the time we got to the church to unload and turn their storage area into our sleeping area, we had seen tons of damage. No one from our group got a usable photo of it, but the gas station on the corner down the road from the church had the overhead awning/roof for the pumps still sitting on one of the pumps....and people were using it.

After we converted our storage/sleeping area at Grace Lutheran, we took a ride to register for our work permits and passes to travel south of the tracks. This ended up taking less time to do than it took me to type up this paragraph, and we went right from the temporary police/fire office to Pastor Barb's house south of the tracks.

Long Beach has railroad tracks that travel east and west through the city about 1/2 mile north of the beach. South of these tracks is where the worst damage and contamination occurred and the national guard put up razor wire along the north side of the tracks to keep out anyone who didn't live or work in that area. The only way to get south of the tracks was through one of the National Guard checkpoints located at certain crossings.

What we saw when we crossed those tracks was amazing. We drove past cement slabs and piles of rubble that used to be houses. Not just 10 or 20, but hundreds upon hundreds....gone. Between the tracks and the beach you have about 3 blocks of housing. The block closest to the beach was gone. 1/2 of the second block from the beach was gone, then from there north most of the houses, or at least frames, were still standing. This is how it went for miles along the coast. The pastor's house was two houses below this debris line on the second block and when we pulled up in front of her house, this was all we saw.

Seeing this and knowing it used to be someone's home is tough enough. Imagine seeing 360 degrees of this. And that's not the half of it. When we stepped out of the van for the first time south of the tracks the reality hit all five of my senses. I'll never be able to describe the smell, but I'll always remember it. The virtual absence of sound, outside of the occasional Humvee, helicopter, or bulldozer. The heavy, gritty moisture in the air that I felt on the uncovered parts of my body. There was also a faint taste in the air that paralleled the distinct odor of the area.

For the most part, I've found it hard to talk or write about this trip. I took plenty of notes on the car rides down and back, as well as every day we were there....but it's not really a series of stories I can just tell. It was an experience that you really had to be there to know about, to feel it. This is the most I've ever written about this trip. Maybe I'm not as good of a writer as I believe, but I just find most of this trip difficult to convey.

I really did have a point for this post when I started....but I've imploded the foundation now, so I guess I will hold on to that one for another day.