Tears of Katrina

From Shannon in Biloxi, September 7, 2005

Just when I think I have no more they come again. Just wanted to let everyone know I'm OK.

We got power back last night but that doesn't mean it will stay. They have blown twice as many transformers as they have replaced. Every street without power and road access to the block has two or three power trucks on it working in shifts day and night. They are all working so hard--the power crews, the relief volunteers, supply lines from churches and other organizations, search and rescue teams and law enforcement from here and everywhere. This city and the people in it appreciate them more than we could ever express.

I'm not too sure I have a lot to say, you all have more information than we down here are getting. But it's bad. So much is gone, so many people are gone and missing. I didn't realize the true extent till yesterday, and I really don’t think I comprehend it all. There’s too much I can’t understand and not enough answers. With the power cames the TV--not a good idea for a shell-shocked population. I didn't leave the neighborhood much and only when I had to.

The one and only ice truck came through here the day Bush was here (was it just for show?), brought in by a state narcotics team from somewhere. A fire truck with bottled water came in yesterday. We've had to run across town to distribution sites and by the time we got there they were usually out. In the middle of the night Wed or Thurs came Kit and two other units, with ice and water. I woke up Logan and we went door to door with the ice that I couldn’t hold in the freezer for the others and passed it out telling them we had water and to come get it.

The Salvation Army was up Tuesday morning serving hot meals to people on the east end as they crawled out of the rubble in shock. They have been feeding people over there till the Red Cross came in Saturday with a National Guard escort. They wouldn't come in without protection and our guard units are in Iraq. Didn't bother the Salvation Army to be unprotected.

They’re having a power struggle on the east end in a way. The Red Cross is trying to run them off the locations they are set up in and the Salvation Army isn't budging, they have been here since Tuesday morning. They said if they wanted these certain locations, on the main streets, they should have been here to get them. The SA was just trying to be convenient to the people, the RC has TV crews……. It's all so .......... it's too much to take in. This is no place for a power struggle. I've lost a lot of respect for the RC at this point.

A little church down the street at the Methodist retirement center has opened a food bank in the neighborhood with food and water as long they have supplies coming in.

According to the RC and FEMA we are basically on our own. We don't exist down here. I told that little FEMA man my address, and exactly where I lived four times yesterday and the blank look never left his face. Kit had to find a big blue tarp for the roof. FEMA showed up Saturday, but no one could find them till yesterday and there are only a handful of them. FEMA isn't the same organization they use to be before they went Homeland Security after 9/11. And I still don't understand the connection between FEMA and the Red Cross. There is one. I just haven't figured it out. Is the RC a government organization? They haven't been making a move with out FEMA approval.

Anyway we have each other, food and water, phones and now power. I don't have to freeze ice for everyone with the generator, but I still have the freezer full just in case the power goes out again. I’m freezing the bottled water. I can get 16 gallon jugs in my freezer.

Miss Mel down the street has been cooking for about a week now, we take her food and her relatives gave her the stuff in their freezers, which was kept frozen with power from generators and is making sure the neighborhood has a hot meal in the evening.

A neighbor who had cancer and was evacuated--called her family in Florida and told them to take care of her neighbors, so they’ve been coming in with a load of supplies about every three days and unloading at Miss Mel’s. They all know if I don’t have what they need, Miss Mel does. By the way, Mel or Melanie is in her twenties. Her hubby walks the block with flashlights at night keeping an eye on us all.

Food still isn't coming in from outside to the stores that made it through the storm. With Homeland Security power, FEMA has been commandeering what they think is necessary or want, from food & water to generators & gas tankers everything is running short. I'm not sure where they are taking it, probably to NO, the trucks aren't coming into the city. I don't understand that either.

The Church organizations that are bringing supplies in aren't leaving the city empty, they are also getting people out. One family per trailer usually pulled behind a pick-up, and housing people till arrangements can be made to get family or friends to come get them. There isn't a rental truck to be had for a few hundred miles in any direction.

I finally got Jill and Ron out of here. They left yesterday evening with what would fit in the trailer and the rest is in my garage, my parents will drop it off to them in Huntsville AL, on their way back from picking up Logan. He'll be going to school in Ohio and staying with Grandma for a while. I won’t leave Kit.

Ron's son got a way out to Texas Saturday or Sunday. His stuff which he gave to Gary (my former foster son)--they couldn't take anything more than they could carry--is in my garage too.

Gary lost his apartment. He got to the stair well as the building collapsed. He dove from the stairwell before it went, into the water and pulled himself to higher ground with a downed power line and walked here, two miles away, in the storm.

Along with thousands of others, I have no job, but Kit has more overtime than he can handle so I'm not real concerned at this moment. I'll worry about when I need too.

All the worst case scenarios were based on Hurricane Camille. No one ever expected something worse. No one expected this storm to get so big so quick. When these areas were proclaimed a disaster area before the storm hit, it was still expected to go up the mouth of the Mississippi. Not far enough west to save us here in Biloxi, but those areas in NO, in the quarter that were actually a few feet above sea level that didn’t get much damage, would have been about 25 to 30 feet under. Between the wind and the water, the people in the convention center and the dome would have died.

I don’t really blame anyone for the slow responses to the gulf coast. I truly believe that when evacuations were going on in NO and no plans were being made before hand to have supplies on the ready to go in there, that at that point, before the storm started curving, they didn’t expect to have anyone left alive in that city. So much has gone wrong and we all can see that.

Will it be fixed for the next disaster? For the people involved, I hope so. I don’t believe natural disasters and homeland security mix. FEMA needs to have to branches. I believe the Red Cross has become too commercialized. I believe the Gov of LA needed to do something to help the Mayor get people out of NO. I believe more of NO should have been evacuated to the west so the rest of the gulf coast could get out.

I wake up 3 and 4 times a night and walk around the house, making sure I’m not dreaming this whole thing. Sometimes during the day I’m not sure if I’m dreaming. I have done so little and am so tired. I hear the wind when there isn’t any. Time had stood still for a week now, and I have no idea what day it is when I wake up, I just know it's tomorrow. I’ve lost three friends and coworkers that I know of, more have lost everything. I pray every night that I wake up and everything is right again, but it never will be. I wake up in the morning pacing the floor afraid Kit isn’t going to make it home. Logan disappears for 5 minutes and I’m in a panic. And I feel very very guilty because I have so much to be thankful for.

Shannon