Day 2, the "Red Zone"

At lunch, we headed for the "Red Zone". The red zone is the worst of the worst destruction. That is where the eastern wall of the eye came ashore. But first, we went to lunch. We got off I-10 at the Diamond Head exit. There were several small buildings there with severe damage. One building was a do it yourself car wash. One of the brick walls had collapsed and the roof it was holding up was collapsed. Other buildings were still boarded up. Others had blue tarps on the roofs. Garbage was lying everywhere. Some places had rebuilt. The Burger Kind looked brand new. Dairy queen was brand new. Subway was brand new. Everything else had major external damage. We ate lunch at Dairy queen then headed down to the red zone.

"Waveland" is an ocean front community with million dollar homes... or at least, that's what they tell me. There's hardly a hint of that now. As we drove from the I-10 exit towards waveland, the destruction was far worse than what I've seen so far. Shops exist only as brick walls and metal frames. The lower levels of most buildings have been gutted by the storm. A house was still in one piece, but was upside down. Cars were on their sides, a pontune boat was wedged between a tree and a telephone pole... more and more debris is everywhere. I keep reminding myself that this happened nearly THREE MONTHS AGO! It looks like it just happened last night! We pull up to a main intersection. There's a K-Mart to the left, closed, with debris all over the parking lot and the front of the store has much damage. The roof of a Payless Shoe store is missing some of its roof. PODS are in the parking lot of the K-Mart, presumably for the store to put what goods remain in the pods for delivery somewhere else. There's a gas station across the street still boarded up, with the roof mostly gone. We cross the intersection into ar residential area. Every house here has flood damage. The doors are open and the windows are open so they can dry out. All the street signs are twisted and leaning over. A house on the right has a collapsed garage, with a crushed car underneath. We drive further and each house has more and more damage. We're just a blocks from the beach. We arrive at some railroad tracks... there is an enormous amount of debris everywhere now. We cross the tracks and the intersection just past the tracks. At this point, al color is gone. Everything is a drab gray. We're now in the red zone. This is where a 26 foot wall of water rushed through, obliterating absolutely everything. There are NO structures beyond this point. There are not even any leaves on the trees that remain standing. Everything is covered with a gray mud and the place reaks of mold, like an old, wet towel that's been left out for weeks. There are large remnants of roofs, but you can't tell where they came from. A childs bed sits on top of what looks like the floor of a house, out in the open.. no walls... just a platform. We go further and find the only structure still standing, just barely... a house that has been moved half way across it's property... it's all crooked and could collapse at any moment. Beyond that, we find nothing but concrete foundations and acouple of mud covered, crumpled cars. We finally make it to the beach road. There are plenty of lots where houses used to be, but there's nothing on them except empty and broken, concrete foundations. We pass several docks that are nothing but rows of posts sticking up out of the sand. There's the remains of what looks like a U-Haul truck, partially buried in the sand. It's like this as far as you can see in both directions up and down the beach front. This is as bad as it gets. If anyone decided to ride out the storm here, they are certainly not with us any longer. NOTHING survived... not even bugs. Just this week, our employees that are working in the red zone are complaining that the bugs are just now starting to show back up in the red zone. From August 29, to now, there were no bugs, no flies, no gnats, no masquittoes. They are just now working their way back from several blocks up.

Day 2, First Day of Work

As the sun came up on Tuesday morning, I could finally see the damage here. The huge sign for the hotel is still standing... kind of. The large metal pole is still there and the framework for the sign is there, but there is no sign. All the plastic surface was blown away. It's totally trashed.

As I drove down I-10 to my FEMA trailer headquarters, I was amazed by the amount of destruction that's still here. Most of the street signs are mangled, twisted pieces of metal. There is junk lying absolutely everywhere! It looks like a garbage truck drove across every square foot of the state with the garbage falling out. The huge billboards on the sides of the interstate have no signs on them and the metal framework that held up the signs are all bend all the way over. Some of the humongous poles are just snapped in half.

As I approved my exit, there was an Exxon station to the right with much of the roof ripped away and debris lying everywhere. Dump trucks full of collected debris are everywhere.

I pulled into my new workplace, which is the site of a former outdoor flea market. We've turned it into a trailer holding and distribution center. My new office is two double-wide trailers connected together. Inside are card tables and old, metal desks, with many people sitting wherever there's room with their company issued notebooks. Maps of the local area are all over the walls, extra computer equipment is in the hallway, it's loud, and it's busy. A meeting with about 20 construction workers is going on discussing assessing sites that may be feasible to hold multiple trailers.

I found my co-worker from Oak Ridge in the room, whom I'm replacing. He shows me around, introduces me to the people I'll be spending the next 24 days with, then shows me the ins and outs of the software I'll be maintaining. Near the end of the day, one of the workers comes over to discuss a problem with the software with one of the guys who's heading the IT project there. I sit in to become a part of it. People have been here along time and are frustrated, so tempers flare easily.

Day 1, Orientation - Jackson, MS

After receiving my mandatory Tetanus shot on Friday, November 18, 2005, on Sunday, 11/20/2005, I drove about 450 miles to Jackson, MS for my orientation before heading down to the "field". I stayed at the Edison Walthal hotel in downtown Jackson. Monday morning, I attended a 1/2 day orientation where the group I was with in the orientation was told about the devastation in Gulfport (Harrison County), MS. I was given my "red bag", which is a large red duffle bag with my hard hat, reflective vest, first aid kit, hand sanitizer, flashlight, head lamp, and rain poncho. I had to provide my own steel shanked boots. After my red bag, I was sent up the street to a government building to get my FEMA badge.

Around 1pm or so, I got in my rented Grand Am and headed down to Gulfport, MS. I took my newly purchased Garmin GPS Street Pilot. Even though this unit is missing an embarrassingly large amount of items, it was still useful. (I recomend against the Garmin. Get a TomTom instead). By the time I reached Hattiesburg, I started seeing some of the hurricane damage. There were plenty of trees knocked over... I still had about 60 miles to go before I got to the red zone. The further I drove down the road, the more and more trees I saw down. Just before it got too dark to see the buildings, I started seeing blue tarps on the roofs of houses and a little bid of storm debris around.

Around 7 or 8pm, I arrived at my hotel, the Crystal Inn, Gulfport, which is where I am right now as I'm writing this. By a stroke of luck, my company was about to book me a room here for a month. It was all about timing. All hotels in this area are solid full because of the victims who are staying in hotels and the FEMA relief workers. I had a difficult time finding it because all of the street lights are out, the sign in front of the hotel no longer exists, and the parking lot lights were out. The hotel was in the dark. In spite of all that, the power is not out, there are just no free standing lamps or signs around here.

Hurricane Katrina Relief Effort

On 11/16/2005, I volunteered for a FEMA mission in GulfPort MS with the company I work for to help distribute temporary housing for the victims of Katrina who lost their homes to hurricane Katrina on 8/29/2005. My role is to polish up the software that our company wrote to manage the victims' requests for housing and distribution of trailers and mobile homes. I will be spending 25 days down here, working 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, including Thanksgiving.

I left from Knoxville, TN (where I live) on Sunday, 11/20/2005.