Hurricane Katrina Response Mission
Team 1 Chronology
Report from Biloxi / Gulfport, Mississippi

submitted by Team Leader Cynthia "Thia" Bankey

Nov. 9
The real adventure started in Houston, where we were treated to a night in the Group Room with all the other stranded passengers waiting for the fog to lift on the Mississippi coast. It was a great chance to empathize with our soon to be "clients" – hard floor , thin blankets, and those nasty hot-circuit emergency lights that never go off.

Nov. 10
Landing in Gulfport we passed low over the gulf, then the beach that is littered with debris, the buildings really are reduced to matchsticks. Surprisingly, there was a lone plane backed up into the woods off the runway. Seems that we are in for a lot of surprises.

The terrain is flat as a pancake, the lower coastal areas grassy swamps, red clay, with 40’ tall yellow pine, pecans and live oaks which spread out 40’ or more. Yellow pine look a lot like miniature Poderosa pine- one tall mast and a little fluff at the top. There are long rows and 100’s of piles of roots along all the roads, huge old live oaks resting on the streets with their roots and the lawn around them at crazy angles. Lots of debris in the tree branches- it looks like Halloween decorations up to 30 feet in the air. Homes are mostly one story. Almost every building has a ‘blue roof’- a taut version of the blue tarps we use.

We started the assessments in less damaged areas- they want to ease us in.
The first houses looked almost intact, a few siding areas damaged, some minor eave boards missing.

Then we entered a subdivision of skeleton houses. Slab, studs and roofs, no windows, doors, innards. The bayou had washed over all of them. Luckily a volunteer group had come in weeks ago and removed all the debris, sheetrock and insulation so mold was not a problem.

Mr. + Mrs. Ball, a sweet elderly couple were alternately stoic and sad, firm in their belief in God. The family glass bowl that always held the traditional celebratory banana pudding was found intact in the front yard, so all was well with the world, even though they lost everything else.

In another area, Jenny’s front porch and living room collapsed under a huge tree letting water pour in. Mold grew rapidly over the couch, the rugs and the walls. At 8 months pregnant, she was unable to cope with clean up, and now her home is unlivable for her now two-week old baby girl.

One homeowner was angry at the world. He was a single parent with 4 kids, his wife was late with child support payments, the house was a wreck to begin with, then there was the hurricane. Besides being unemployed since his employer -a beachfront Casino-was gone, one daughter’s room was now unlivable from mold.

Nov. 11
Now that we are experts, we get sent to areas of greater damage. The old sections of Biloxi which are on a peninsula- the gulf on one side, the back bay on the other- are really hard hit. Whole sections are rubble, with a lone house here and there standing, some trees made it through. The streets have been scraped of debris, and now there are crews coming around gathering up the 10’ high pile of debris in front of each house and empty lot.