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On the road again:
Greetings from Buccaneer State Park,
along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico,
in Waveland, Mississippi
Today's Story
When Hurricane Katrina came ashore on August 29, 2005, the national news was almost exclusively about New Orleans, Louisiana, which was, indeed, severely impacted by that powerful storm.
But Katrina’s landfall was actually 50 miles east of New Orleans in a little town of Waveland, Mississippi, which was also hard hit by Hurricane Camille on August 17, 1969.
The museum is in the Waveland Cultural and Civic Center, a one-and-a-half-story brick, Tudor Revival-style structure that was once the Old Waveland School, built ca. 1927 for students from kindergarten through eighth grade. It was the city’s principal school until 1972. It reopened as a public library and cultural center in 1976.
Heavily damaged by Katrina, it is the only historical building in Waveland to survive that storm. A blue line painted on an interior hallway, ten feet above the floor, shows the water level inside the building during Katrina’s storm surge.
A gravestone-type monument outside marks the names of the 27 Waveland residents who died in the hurricane.
This was the first building to be restored after Katrina, and it served multiple purposes in the aftermath, from community gathering point to city hall, from courthouse to jailhouse.
The exhibits include a newly released documentary that captures the powerful punch that Katrina delivered, quilts made by a local quilter of fabric scraps she found along the beach after the storm, photos of Waveland stores and stately homes that were completely wiped away, and art and oral histories that tell the stories of survivors.
Enlarged photos poignantly depict crumbled and cracked roadways, shifted and bent railroad tracks, concrete pier pylons with no walkways, boats atop buildings, appliances scattered here and there, and acres upon acres of rubble, fragmented boards, glass shards, roof shingles, and broken concrete.
Interpretive signs report the storm’s impact by the numbers: A natural disaster area of 57,535 square miles; 352,000 housing units destroyed; 1,720 people dead (238 in Mississippi); 700,000 people displaced; federal government recovery assistance of more than $24 billion; and 1,220 disaster recovery and reconstruction projects.
Interpretive signs also track the chronology of the storm and its aftermath: mandatory evacuations that some people chose not to heed; interstate highways jammed; inland hotels and motels filled; roads and bridges impassable due to rising water.
Early on the morning of August 29, the landfall date, a NOAA data buoy east of the mouth of the Mississippi River reported wave heights of 47 feet; a wall of water 30 feet above sea level swept through Waveland, a volume exacerbated by high tide; the water reached 12 miles inland while storm winds of 85 mph extended outward for 230 miles.
Prior to Katrina, Camille, in 1969, was considered to be the benchmark hurricane that no storm could possibly surpass, but Katrina had a much higher storm surge that forced people to climb to their attics and rooftops even as their homes tore and crumbled beneath them. “I could hear the nails being ripped out of the boards,” said one survivor on the documentary.
But while the destruction of this worst natural disaster in U.S. history was undeniably huge, the message of resilience and reconstruction resonated in the stories contained in the museum.
As a museum brochure states, the story here is not just of "devastation and heartbreak on a scale that stunned the world" but also of "courage bolstered by humor and ... an unprecedented number of volunteers who poured in from around the country."
In her oral history, one woman who had evacuated said that, after the storm, when she returned to her destroyed home and found the foundation intact, she decided that God wanted her to stay and rebuild.
And that—as well as pulling together—is what most people did.
When the winds died, first responders and neighbors used boats, maneuvering around fallen trees, debris, and light poles, to help each other reach higher ground. Stores with merchandise on high shelves were opened for salvage; people took what they needed without looting.
The entire state of Mississippi was without electricity. The 1,200 local linemen who were on stand-by prior to the storm were insufficient to restore power, so a call went out for assistance and an army of 12,000 linemen, representing each state, came to replace transmission lines, substations, and local connections.
With cell towers and radio towers wiped out, the only form of communication was ham radios. “We were isolated. Our families didn’t know if we were alive or dead,” said a woman who had not evacuated.
On August 30, the day after the storm passed through, 80 percent of the homes in Waveland were declared uninhabitable. Twenty percent of the town’s 8,400 pre-storm residents would choose to move away and not return. Even today, lots on Coleman Street, the former main street prior to Katrina, sports several “for sale” signs.
August 30 also marked the beginning of the nation’s largest search-and-rescue effort, involving U.S. Coast Guard helicopter crews who looked for people stranded on rooftops, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Urban Search and Rescue Task Force, personnel from the U.S. Department of Defense and other federal agencies, and state and local first responders.
Every home was inspected. Exterior walls of each checked home were spray-painted with a highly visible orange X and other data, including the date the house was checked, the number of persons—dead or alive—found inside, and warnings of personal hazards.
The National Guard and U.S. Army Corp of Engineers began to clear debris from streets, making a path for emergency vehicles.
But there was no water, ice, or food in Hancock County, where Waveland is located, so airfields were cleared of debris and supplies were flown in. The first shipment of ice went to hospitals and funeral homes to preserve bodies prior to embalming.
Gasoline was reserved for official vehicles, which was okay with average citizens because their cars had been destroyed.
Stranded animals, searching for food and water, quickly became a nuisance, so teams rounded up stray pets. With fences destroyed, cattle and horses roamed freely but were corralled by cowboys on horseback; these larger animals would remain in temporary holding pens for months.
As news of the devastation populated the airwaves, volunteers from churches and communities around the country started to arrive. Many of them worked in food tents that were set up in parks and parking lots.
In addition to food and supplies, these became places where victims connected with neighbors and found encouragement. Everyone was served equally regardless of appearance or position.
Recreational vehicles provided temporary homes for some of the victims. Many of those RVs were parked in Buccaneer State Park, a shoreline area that did not reopen to the public for many years after the storm but now is equipped with brick bathhouses and a laundry facility, elevated on concrete stilts.
Over the next 20 months, debris was removed by private contractors. In Waveland, the volume of rubble measured 1.4 million cubic yards, enough to fill 26,000 semi-truck trailers or 101,000 dump trucks.
One of my good friends, a baseball fanatic, often says, “Mother Nature bats last,” meaning that she gets in the final word and, in effect, we puny humans are powerless against her forces.
That concept might yet prove to be true; maybe through climate change, the Matriarch of the Environment will crush us with a game-ending, walk-off grand slam home run.
But, in the meantime, people—when humbled by disasters—continue to rise up and rise above, rebuilding and restoring, constructing and continuing. In our persistence, we find hope.
Maybe, eventually, we might even learn to pull together to jointly face any and all obstacles—natural or manmade—as the one human race we are.
Thanks for reading my stories.
God blesses everyone ... no exceptions.
Robert (Bob) Weir
