WAVELAND, Miss. — Come here to Ground Zero of Hurricane Katrina and walk around the place where it appears as if a giant stomped on everything in his path to witness the awesome power of water. The seemingly innocent stuff we buy in bottles, expect to pour out of our faucets, nourish our lawns with, splash around in during the summer, bathe in and use in a hundred other ways is a force for tremendous destruction when applied to angry weather.While planning a tour of Katrina’s destruction in Mississippi with members of the National Conference of Editorial Writers, a collection of friends and official sources told me: You’ve got to see it to believe it.
They are correct.
We saw it. It staggered us. Six months later, the region is on the comeback, but has years to go.
We stood Friday in what used to be the main drag of the tiny Mississippi community of Waveland — the spot near where Katrina’s center made landfall early on Aug. 29. A 35-foot storm surge crushed practically everything in this Gulf-front town. Foundations are wiped clean of their homes. Shreds of clothing litter trees that are twisted, misshapen and stripped of much of their bark. Chunks of pavement pile up along the side of the road they once covered. Steps that once led to buildings now lead to nowhere.
Brian Mollere greets our group as we get off the bus in front of what was once Waveland’s city hall. With his dog Rocky — a small pug — trailing him, Brian, who has spent five decades here, explains his family’s deep roots in Waveland and how rebuilding is the only thing he ever would consider. Clutching photographs depicting how the town once looked, he tells us how his mother died during Katrina.
The stories of bravery and sorrow pile up. Waveland’s police force hunkered down in the police station on the Sunday night before Katrina hit. After their headquarters started taking on water, the officers moved to higher ground at the city library. Once that locale became threatened, they had to seek even higher ground in nearby homes until the water levels fell. Locals proudly tell of how the 26-person force heroically ventured out Monday to bring order to the soggy chaos.
Down the road to the east in Pass Christian, Martha Murphy is among the dozens of residents attending a Friday morning public meeting to discuss how to rebuild their town. One of her friends introduces Martha as "one of the homeless." Murphy smiles slightly as she casually tells us she "lost everything."
"It’s very time-consuming to be homeless," Murphy, who is living in a FEMA-provided trailer in a parking lot near I-10, said. Even though she has a home in Louisiana, she’d rather live in Pass Christian, a place where she’s spent much of her life.
Losing the house is nothing, she tells us, compared to losing her town. Murphy is a one-woman Chamber of Commerce, scrapping as hard as she can to get back what was swept away.
Aug. 29 reshaped lives here. Business and personal concerns — so vital before — are in the back seat, far behind recovering from a hurricane. "We’re trying to get our town back," Murphy said.
A sign commemorating the cleanup from 1969’s Hurricane Camille still stands in Waveland, as does the town’s water tower. Also, the greenery of the live oaks is sprouting forth. Salt water is typically deadly to coastal vegetation. In New Orleans, thousands of other varieties of trees are dead or slowly dying, victims of Katrina’s salty visit.
A live oak defeats the ill effects of sea water by withdrawing into itself, essentially hunkering down. With the danger gone, bits of green are returning to the live oaks here. The trees, like the people we visited with in coastal Mississippi, are coming back.
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