Hurricane Katrina – Four Year Anniversary – Part III

We rode out Hurricane Katrina in this house in the Quail Ridge subdivison. This is after some "tidying up." The chimney and most of the shingles are gone, and the eastern eave was blown out (giving us a view of the sky in the guest bath).

[Click here for Part I and Part II.]

Finally, the wind slowed enough for us to try to make our way back home. Cut off from all communication (even our cell phones no longer functioned), we wondered what we would see as we emerged from the boarded up house in Quail Ridge.  The Ford Expedition, shiny and flawless when we arrived the day before, was now pock-marked and dented.

A cursory look at the house revealed heavy damage. The chimney lay in pieces on the patio, the roofing was stripped, and the corner eave resided on the front lawn, explaining the new view of the sky from the guest bathroom.  Trees, usually lush with summertime foliage, were winter bare, even the evergreens.  Of course, many were so hobbled and broken, their survival was questionable.  And fallen, uprooted trees were plentiful, too.

Our house in Gulfport, Mississippi, a day after Hurricane Katrina (roads freshly cleared). We were two houses short of flooding.

In fact, we were barely out of the neighborhood when we came upon a fallen tree straddling John Clark Road from ditch to ditch. Apparently, our efforts to get home were over in less than a quarter mile’s drive.  As we contemplated turning around, two men with chain saws popped out of the pick-up in front of us (I love Mississippi men) and buzzed through the obstruction, tossing wood chunks to the side until a passable expanse emerged.  We dodged debris and scooted under sagging power lines the rest of the way, all the while dumbfounded at the amount of destruction this understudy to Hurricane Camille had caused.

Shipwreck at Floral Hills Cemetery in Gulfport after Hurricane Katrina. Notice the empty headstone vases...the silk flowers were all over the Bayou Oaks neighborhood in Gulfport, decorating the piles of debris.

The closer we got to home, the more we realized that something profound had happened. Passing over the bridge, we saw the dozens of boats that had been protectively moored inland; these were now battered or sunken or tossed ashore.  The streets of our neighborhood were impassable, so we parked and walked in, dazed by the gut-wrenching sight.  Our beautiful, manicured community had become a foul, rubbage-filled hell hole.  Our own house had luckily escaped flooding, but many of our neighbors’ homes would have to be gutted.  Furniture and clothes and personal belongings of every sort had washed into the streets; the eclectic piles lay smeared in the muddy silt of Bayou Bernard, colorless except for the surreal splashes of silk flowers that had blown over from Floral Hills Cemetery.

Many houses in Gulfport experienced flooding during Hurricane Katrina, even though they were not in flood zones. This is a house on our street in Bayou Oaks.

If someone had told us before this storm that one day our house would incur $46,000 in damages and we would feel damned lucky about it, I never would have believed them. But I assure you, as the reality of Hurricane Katrina became clearer, that’s exactly how we felt.

Tomorrow:  Hurricane Katrina – Four Year Anniversary – Part IV.

Karen Blakeney

Tags: Gulfport Mississippi, Hurricane Camille, Hurricane Katrina, Karen Blakeney