Mississippi Gulf Coast Reeling from Hurricane Katrina From Ground Zero

This is not going to be your regular news story. There are a lot of reasons for this. The first is that I am as much a part of the staggering story of Hurricane Katrina as the hundreds of thousands of people all along the northern Gulf Coast whose lives have been changed forever by this storm. After all, I live here too.

You cannot believe how difficult conditions are here and how frightening our immediate future is. This story will also be different because of how GCN is getting this to you. You have to know that communications, telephones, Internet and cells phones are not working, or working only marginally at the time of this report.

After great effort we have managed to get online, but we still need help and we are not sure even our current efforts will work long.

I have to thank GCN acting editor Perry Hicks, who is based in Virginia for relaying information from me to get some information out from Biloxi. And I want to thank my brother, Ken Burton, who is in Colorado Springs for engineering the GCN Survivor Connector Database to help people find the status loved ones impacted from the storm.

Many of you have already seen the videos and news stories from the national media. I can tell you that aerial photography, as graphic as it is, in no way shows the true story from the ground. I struggle to find the words. The faces of friends, and family, the hollow fearful eyes as Coast residents, long experienced with hurricanes, know that this is a life changing event.

I have to thank God that my home and the homes of my brother and parents survived. But that doesn’t mean in any way that we don’t have major work ahead of us. Like thousands on the Coast, our days since the storm has been filled with trying to clear downed trees from our roofs and making makeshift repairs to protect our property. The amount of debris from trees is staggering.

Imagine every tree and bush from a lush semi-tropical environment stripped of the green of life and dumped limp and lifeless. It is as if winter in the coldest states suddenly came overnight, yet temperatures are still in the upper 90’s. It is the heat and humidity that is so debilitating, which brings up a major point of survival here - Water!

Wednesday, the first distribution of water began to be seen. With just three days since the storm, that sounds pretty quick, but keep in mind that the high temperatures mean you go through water fast.

The national news media has given you the big picture on how the Federal and State governments are responding and the news has been bad on that front with widespread criticism. But people just don’t appreciate the scale of what has happened, and how hard it is just to begin to help.

First, just getting around is extremely difficult. Trees are down everywhere, especially in neighborhoods where people actually live. The news media generally talk about cities as if their downtowns was where everyone lived. But it is in the subdivisions and neighborhoods that Hurricane Katrina ruined lives and dreams.

Concerns over how badly Katrina tore into families and how shook people are is that officials have not released death figures. It will be shocking. One person who I know that is working on the recovery of bodies said that the teams are not being informed of the totals.

If the word chaos describes confusion, than Katrina may find itself another word for the same. It is now four days since the storm and communications are still nearly impossible. This is for residents and officials alike. It would be wrong at this point, however, to blame public officials for the problems that they are having with getting the help to the ground. The communication system on the Coast suffered tremendous damage and no effort of the scale that is needed can move quickly without communications. A lot of work on lines and telephone poles is underway, but we are talking miles and miles of line and thousands of repairs. Bell South and Mississippi Power are working as hard as possible.

There is some water flowing into homes and apartments at this time. The pressure is extremely low, and not enough to fight a fire with, but it will fill up a toilet tank. It doesn’t take long to realize that the simplest necessities of life make really big differences.

The lack of gasoline has largely stopped the sightseeing and frivolous driving that initially clogged the few streets that were opened shortly after Katrina. For the brave folks that have gone on gasoline runs, they report they have to go more than 150 miles just to find a few gallons as restrictions are in effect.

The result is people cannot risk driving much. This is a major issue because even if food, water and medical distribution centers are set up, people can’t get there.

Just last night, Long Beach police and city vehicles were out of fuel. The city’s employees were scrambling for fuel in school buses and wherever they could find it. The hundreds of emergency service workers are finding that once they get here, there are only a few places they can get fuel and those places are running out. If the fuel issue is not resolved within two or three days, the situation on the Mississippi Coast will become extremely dangerous.

The FEMA personnel there, although civilian, seem to be operating under some communication restrictions. EG, this article:

Hastings, a volunteer on the Region 1 squad of the federal Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Team, was deployed to the hurricane-stricken area with fellow DMORT members to set up temporary morgue facilities and help in the massive body recovery and identification process.Made up of private citizens who bring their particular area of expertise to the team, DMORT is activated in the wake of major disasters such as Katrina and Sept. 11. It now operates under the Department of Homeland Security.
...Late on Tuesday, after authorities cleared volunteers to speak with their hometown media, Hastings talked on her cell phone while pacing in the muggy air outside the temporary morgue. In the background, an audible hum signaled much-welcomed electricity – in this case, it was powering the refrigeration unit on the trailer truck where bodies were being stored...
...She could say only she’s in Mississippi – authorities don’t allow personnel to give their exact location, she said.

If they're not allowed to give location, it's possible they're restricted in other information they can give out

In a USA Today Letter to the editor:

First of all I would like to congratulate you on your win — it was hard-earned and deserved. What I really wrote for was to thank you for thinking of the victims of Katrina. I live 60 miles northwest of New Orleans, and sustained minimum damage. We have been watching the news reports and they are not allowed to report what is really happening.
There are things that they cannot show for fear of panic and censorship of those who are affected I guess. We are hearing stories from people who are going down there to help. No one can even imagine the devastation without witnessing it first hand. There are bodies everywhere, pets and animals and waste.
Without people of your character it would be harder to recover. Thank you and Hendrick Motorsports for your kind donation, and keep up the good work.

Residents returning to their homes can't get to the affected areas without a pass from the Military Police

"No one can even imagine the devastation without witnessing it first hand."

I can understand them not wanting to create panic. But it seems like for even a historical record of this disaster, it should all be documented by several sources.

My personal opinion is still the public should be made aware of the real situation going on now. Those who are down there are having to suffer the witnessing of such devastation. The rest of the country and world should bear it too.

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