My Bro's 'Hood

Yesterday was the first time I've been down to see my brothers and their neighborhood since Hurricane Katrina hit. It was only a couple of weeks ago that the city of Gulfport opened Hwy 90. I thought the barbed wire would be gone but it's not. My brother's home was one of the very few south of the railroad tracks that had no water in it.




One of the roads leading up to my brothers house.







One of the many containers from the Port of Gulfport. These containers contained anything from bananas, pineapples, frozen chicken, frozen pork, industrial paper rolls, and clothing. The chicken and pork are proving very difficult to clean up. Fortunately, where I was, most of the containers seemed to just have clothing or industrial paper rolls.







This child's toy brought a sense of poignancy about what I was looking at.






Some of the homes that had extensive damage had FEMA trailers in front of them. These people are still waiting for one.






This house was washed from it's foundation. It's about a half-block from my brothers.







One of my brothers, Mike, and their home. The water was underneath their home and caused some buckling of the floors due to wave action but did not make into the house. They are very fortunate, because the house across the street from them had a lot of water damage.






The barbed wire. It bothers me that this is still up now that Hwy 90 is open.








Heading back toward the beach, the wasteland.






My family was very fortunate. All of our houses are standing. The one that had the worst damage is being repaired. Three of us were unemployed because of the places we worked at were either heavily damaged or destroyed outright. I am very lucky that I can continue to work at my old job at reduced hours. The other two have found good jobs elsewhere.

Yesterday wasn't too bad as far as seeing all this destruction for the first time. I was thinking about it and it hit me. In my previous forays, there was a lack of people. Yesterday, there was more traffic on Hwy 90 and there were people at the beach. In fact people were taking pictures of me walking along the beach!