A Panorama of Desperation and Destruction
Melissa Block is in Mississippi, and she sent this essay about her travels. She describes the lines at the gas stations, the scenes of demolition left behind by Hurricane Katrina, and amid it all, a few signs of normalcy.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
In New Orleans and across the Gulf Coast, the scope of the destruction caused by Hurricane Katrina is overwhelming, impossible to digest. Sometimes it's the small details that give a sense of the story. Our colleague Melissa Block is in southern Mississippi this week, and she sent us this essay about her travels.
MELISSA BLOCK reporting
Drive south to the Gulf Coast from the capital, Jackson, and the first sign of something askew in the world is a line of dozens of cars alongside the highway in pre-dawn blackness, people sleeping in those cars, waiting for the hope of a tankful of gas in the morning. Around Hattiesburg, the force of Katrina starts to show clearly: light poles smashed across tanker trucks, huge oak trees toppled on their sides. Roll down the window and you can smell the damage, smell the timber and pine from the jagged wounds of snapped and twisted tree trunks.
Hundreds of miles of power lines are down. Hundreds of thousands of people in Mississippi still without electricity. Bucket trucks carrying workers from electrical companies around the country have started to make their way here, and they'll be heroes. One electrical worker from Ohio tells me, `They applaud for us in the restaurants a lot of the time.'
Billboards left strangely intact still promise the fictional pleasures of acrobatic acts and country music shows at Gulf Coast casinos that no longer exist. And then Gulfport and a sign spray-painted on the side of a store: `Looters will be shot.' People are going from shelter to shelter with photographs of family members they're anxious to find. It feels like 9/11 all over again.
Hurricanes are capricious, and Katrina is no exception. A statue of the Virgin Mary stands perfectly vertical in one front yard. Around the corner, one house is perfectly fine, and the owner's already back and tidying up. But down the block, a second house has pancaked to the ground. Its roof is sitting next to the remnants of a life: a motorcycle helmet, muddy lace curtains, a floral suitcase, photos of a young man grinning proudly in his military uniform.
Still, in the midst of all of the chaos and brutal wreckage, there are signs of normal life. A young girl stands in her yard, drawing on an easel as her parents cart their soggy belongings to the sidewalk in trash bags. A woman steps outside to feed her cats. And insurance agents are already opening their doors. They'll have plenty of business.
SIEGEL: That's our colleague Melissa Block with her impressions of Gulfport, Mississippi.
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