Two years later

They had to deal with no electricity and trees in or on their houses. I just had three days of incredible August heat and no electricity.  But before I felt too bad for anyone around my neck of the woods I had to worry about Jim. I had gotten a call from him during the storm and for a long time there, I wasn't even sure he and Shelly had survived.  I'll always give him hell for not evacuating. He had lots of friends up here in Jackson BEGGING him to come up and after Katrina I'm sure he'll never even think about riding out a hurricane again.  After talking to him a couple days after I still had no electricity so all I knew about the damage was from phone calls and the radio. From those details I knew it was 'bad'. Really bad. Then when I went to work a couple of 12 hour volunteer shifts for the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency (MS FEMA basically) I got my first look at TV pictures and realized it was far worse than I imagined. I was finally able to see the pictures that everyone else in the country had seen. It was amazingly bad.

Two or maybe three weeks after the storm I went down to help Jim 'clean out his house'.  When you hear that phrase you have something in mind about a mop and a duster. This was NOTHING like that! The cleanest room in his house looked like this.
When we finally finished his house was nothing but a frame and studs. EVERYTHING had to come out.

And Jim was one of the lucky ones. I felt I had misjudged the damage done from hearing stories and radio compared to when I finally saw it on television, and I did, but the devastation actually done leaves even the television viewer with an incomplete impression. The destruction was EVERYWHERE for as far as you could see for HUNDREDS of miles. As we were closing in on Jim's home I saw a house on top of another house.
I saw debris fields EVERYWHERE.

And every house, EVERY HOUSE, had spray paint on them letting people know "We're OK!"

Jim ended up like a lot of people and just had to leave the coast. He lived here in Jackson for awhile, then Shreveport, now he's living in Texas. Lot's of people that have a lot less mobility than Jim are still stuck down there living in trailers two years later. New Orleans is hurting, so is the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

Jim is just now getting to the point where he'll post about Katrina and it doesn't completely stress him out. That storm left a lot of destruction behind and even more emotional pain.  Drop by Jim's rundown of the storm and let him know you're glad he made it if you're a friend of his. He's got links to some of his photos from that time you can see on Flikr. You can see my photos of the coast here.