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Mississippi
Returning
The
devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina was awe
inspiring. But so was the pluck and fortitude of
the people in Mississippi's Gulf region we had the
fortune to meet.
Every
once in a while we have to put our money where our
mouth is and our eyeballs on the target.
Accordingly, in early October, we loaded up and
headed to Gulfport, Miss., to help with the
hurricane relief efforts. We went as part of
a church-sponsored team that slept on Sunday
school room floors, shared one shower per gender
with about 80 people, and worked our butts off.
Even then, we had it much better than many other
volunteers who slept in tents and didn’t have
access to showers.
The team was
outstanding in its ability to work together and
accomplish a great deal, especially when one
considers that many had no construction-related
skills and many were from very sedentary
backgrounds. Even though the flesh was weak,
the spirit was obviously willing and the need was
so great that it was not difficult to stay
motivated.
The purpose of this
column is to humbly report what we saw --and didn’t
see. We are aware that earlier
discussions on the subject stirred up some real
heartburn, and it is not our intention to revisit
any of that -- just to let our readers in on what
we experienced.
Our task in the
Gulf region was to get the houses still standing
"cleaned out" sufficiently that they
could be
rebuilt later. This entailed removing everything wet from the houses:
furniture, rugs, clothes, wallboard, insulation,
et al. Since many of the houses had been
totally inundated or severely damaged by rain,
this meant that everything had to come out
and go on the rubbish pile.
We saw hundreds
of once–priceless antiques and a significant
portion of the nation’s cultural heritage and
family history in terms of furnishings, paintings,
musical instruments, books, and photographs piled
by the side of the streets awaiting their trip to
the landfill. Because mold is the enemy when
things get wet, we stripped houses down to
the studs and framing so that the remaining
superstructure could be sprayed with a chlorine
solution that killed the mold, could be allowed to dry
out.
The wiring and plumbing
could wait until later, along with reinstalling
the wallboard,
cabinets, appliances and flooring. This approach
apparently was cheaper than bulldozing the home
and starting
from scratch -- unless the mold got too far
advanced, at which point there was no other
choice.
Now to our observations.
First of all, Mother Nature is truly awesome in
her ability to kick ass. The power of the
wind and storm surge to utterly destroy
humanity’s feeble attempts at protecting itself
is almost beyond comprehension. Comparing
Katrina to Bomb Damage Assessment missions in
Vietnam after a whole herd of B-52s dropped into a
relatively small area everything they could carry
leads us to conclude that our beloved Air Force
comes in a distant second to a really aggravated
combination of wind and wave.
UNFREAKINGBELIEVABLE, sports fans! It was
every bit as bad as the Asian tsunami but
fortunately just hit in a less densely populated
area. The next time you hear the obligatory
TV interview with some daft resident of an area in
the path of a major storm who claims he/she is
going to ride it out, just remember that you are
not hearing from a Phi Beta Kappa.
Speaking of population,
either the people of
Mississippi, both black and white, are a more
resilient bunch than their next door Louisiana
neighbors or the mainstream media (MSM) really
misrepresented the story in the latter area.
Contrary to what we had seen on the tube and read
about in the papers, the Mississippians were tough
minded, not whiny, resolute in their purpose to
get on with their lives, could take a hell of a
licking and keep on ticking, and spent just about
zero time on the blame game in our hearing. One
local had enough of his sense of humor left to
post a spray-painted sign on scrap lumber
announcing his badly damaged property was the
“Yard of the Month.”
Even people
who had their homes washed away in the storm surge
(technically a flood) who were ineligible for
flood insurance – and therefore had
none—because they did not live in a flood zone (a government designation, we might add) just dried
their tears, sucked it up, and got busy
rebuilding.
Damage from the
storm basically came in three flavors: flood
damage from the storm surge (in some cases 25-30
feet high three or more miles inland); direct
damage from the high winds; and water damage from
the rain getting inside of wind-damaged
structures. Insurance coverage is
dicey.
We learned a lot about
Mississippi. We had always thought of the
place as something of an armpit, quite frankly.
After all, some of the worst abuses of slavery and
Jim Crow occurred there and it had to still be an
awful place. Or not.
Either
Mississippians have come a long way in the last 20
or so years or the storm so totally leveled the
playing field that everybody was tripping over
themselves looking out for each other. The church
we worked with in Gulfport, which had over 60
percent of
its membership experiencing a major loss in the
storm, was serving 2,500 meals a week to
storm-affected folks, black, white or whoever else
came to the door within days after the wind stopped
blowing. And they weren’t
doing it with hired help, either. These were
the same people whose own homes had been knocked
down.
The locals were extremely
appreciative of the fact that ordinary people from
Virginia had come all that way just to help them.
Because access to many areas was still controlled,
our cars had magnetic signs identifying us as
relief workers. Riding down the road to our
projects, we were unfailingly beeped at by folks
who would make the prayer sign or give us the
thumbs up to express their gratitude. At
stoplights, people would roll down their windows
and say “God Bless you for coming down to help
us. We really appreciate it and just can’t
thank you enough.”
(Perhaps that’s why
Mississippi has such a bad rep: they apparently
still believe in God down there. Imagine
that!)
A
little less likely than
elsewhere to rely on vague notions of brotherhood,
motherhood, and apple pie in protecting the
property of citizens, black and white, local and state government in
Mississippi put the
most vulnerable areas under tight martial law.
Even though our vehicles were labeled as part of
the relief effort, we still had to be accompanied
by a church official with a hall pass signed by
the Governor to gain entry into some areas of
town.
Turning to the national
government, the MSM played and is still playing
the blame game for all it was worth – plus a lot
more. The Federal Emergency Management
Agency or FEMA came in for a major dose. IOHO, FEMA is misnamed. It should be called
something like the Federal Emergency Response
Support Agency. From what we could see, FEMA
appears to be a purchasing and contracting agency
that gets supplies, services, and equipment into
disaster areas. It then seems to be mostly
up to the locals to put the goodies to use.
In Gulfport, FEMA provided thousands of blue tarps
to help seal up roofs and walls damaged in the
storm, contracted for storm-produced refuse and
damaged house contents to be hauled away, and
bought trailers to serve as temporary housing.
Who among us has not seen ad nauseum the MSM
playing aerial shots of FEMA trailers lined up
with some somber voiceover implying Federal
malfeasance for not having all the trailers
installed in someone’s yard?
Even
one with limited mental faculties (which
apparently excludes all of our MSM reportorial
talent) could quickly figure out that a trailer
without a connection to potable water, a working
sewer system, and a functioning power grid is
worse than useless - unless you're looking for a dark, humid
place to grow mushrooms. Everywhere that we
saw neighborhoods –including black
neighborhoods—that had all three prerequisites
we saw the trailers present and in use.
Where the prereqs weren’t there, neither were
the trailers.
There may be a better way to do the trailer thing
but we probably ought to consider whether, once
Ms. Smith’s neighborhood can accept trailers, it
is better to be able to quickly pull one out of
storage or to have to go out into the marketplace
to find her one. Maybe ol’ Brownie did do
a hell of a job.
The blame game
inevitably brings us to the New Orleans question.
We didn’t go there but based on what we saw
where we did travel, if New Orleans is to be
rebuilt it will be because the locals there decide
to do it. IOHO, it is fair to use national
tax money to help them create a more realistically
survivable environment and the other kinds of
Federal assistance that are routinely provided to
disaster areas, but beyond that, it should be up
to the people If they really love the place
that much, they’ll go back. If they
don’t, fugeddaboutit Remember also that
most of the low cost labor that kept New Orleans
humming came from the Lower 9th Ward. If
those folks don’t come back, double
fugeddaboutit.
What message would we
leave you with? We have never been awarded
our Official Pollyanna Merit Badge, so we will
tread carefully here. In addition to being
even more convinced that each of us should take
seriously our own disaster preparations, we also
saw the economic inutility of nice clothes that
families were no longer wearing due to size
problems or a changed job situation going into the
rubbish heap when they could have gone to someone
less fortunate to possibly help them better their
circumstances. It really could happen here.
Even as we write, there are wildfires and floods
causing damage in this country. We had an
incredible hurricane season this past year and
serious earthquakes in recent years in the
States.
Also, we read about the
Boomers and others who are looking for meaningful
activities to be involved in. Think about
helping out the folks in the Gulf region.
The United Methodist Church, which has a very
experienced disaster relief mission program,
estimates that volunteers will be needed in the
Gulf region at least through 2015. It is not too late to get involved. There are
houses to be rebuilt, Habitat for Humanity houses
to be built and assembled, people to advise on how
to proceed with their broken lives, hands to
hold.
As we neared the end of our
ten-day stay in Gulfport, one of our more poetic
team members reflected that he felt we had perhaps
dipped out a cup in an ocean of misery.
We
couldn’t help but think of the starfish story.
It seems that a fellow is out taking his morning
walk along the beach when the tide recedes further
than usual and leaves many starfish stranded out
of the water. Fearing they will all perish
by being left high and dry, he begins a frantic
effort to grab as many as he can and throw them
back into the water. As he is so engaged, an
older and wiser type says to him: “Hey, Buddy,
you can’t save all those starfish!” “I
know,” he replies. “But I can save this
one.”
--
January 17, 2006
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