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.