Hurricane Katrina in South Mississippi

June 20, 2006 6:26 AM

Hurricane Katrina in South Mississippi Before and after photos.
posted by ColdChef (28 comments total)

Good find ! I wonder why they didn't just make a list :o
posted by elpapacito at 6:40 AM on June 20, 2006

Great shots, but horribly designed site. Individual flash popups for each before/after? While I appreciate that there's a story to go along with each one, I got really bored after 2 of them.
posted by antifuse at 6:55 AM on June 20, 2006

Thanks for the link ColdChef. Katrina's impact on South MS has always seemed under-reported on the National level (which is not to say that Katrina + NOLA were or are sufficiently reported on, either).

/ bias: family in Gautier, MS.
posted by safetyfork at 6:56 AM on June 20, 2006

While I agree the site is poorly designed, I found the content compelling enough to overlook it. YMMV.
posted by ColdChef at 7:01 AM on June 20, 2006

I clicked through a bunch and this one seems the most dramatic.
posted by mathowie at 7:03 AM on June 20, 2006

I was there in Hancock County. This area seems to have gotten less attention. We saw few reporters on the ground compared to how we were tripping over them to the East and West. If you scroll down you will see a link to a book about what we saw. I don’t know if he has any books left but there are pictures on his web site.
posted by MapGuy at 7:17 AM on June 20, 2006

Great site. Little can compare, however, to seeing this in person, and driving down US 90 and seeing . I remember seeing the photos of a wrecked Gulf Shores, Ala. after Ivan and then driving down there about nine months later and thinking, Oh, it's recovering just fine, not even a fourth as bad as I was expecting. The Miss. Gulf Coast, nine months after Katrina, was a totally different story. If you'd ever seen the Miss. Coast before, you'd be brought at least close to tears, or just struck dumb.
posted by raysmj at 7:21 AM on June 20, 2006

.
posted by bukharin at 7:32 AM on June 20, 2006

The content is really compelling, but I do wish it was easier to get at.
posted by jacquilynne at 7:36 AM on June 20, 2006

Interesting find, but it seems like these are after not only the storm, but after the bulldozers as well. Damage to non-New Orleans areas certainly deserves more attention, though.
posted by mzurer at 7:37 AM on June 20, 2006

Well, Katrina's strom surge pretty much was a dozer.
posted by raysmj at 7:50 AM on June 20, 2006

Wow. Just wow. It breaks my heart to see all those historic houses, completely destroyed. Very cool, though, that the 1848 lighthouse survived almost intact.
posted by mygothlaundry at 7:51 AM on June 20, 2006

I liked these, ColdChef, thanks. And since someone from the site in question will probably be reading this thread, they should probably think about how much easier navigation would be if each page had a simple "next" and "previous" option. Forcing us to click back to the index each time is silly - if you want us to stick around, that is.
posted by mediareport at 7:52 AM on June 20, 2006

Argh. I think the designers of that interface finally figured out how to cause physical pain over TCP/IP.
posted by loquacious at 8:28 AM on June 20, 2006

It's that "Real Cities" template or engine or whatever that runs these. Go to pretty much any Knight Ridder or non-major city's site and it looks exactly the same. The only difference are the names.
posted by geoff. at 9:02 AM on June 20, 2006

I am new to MeFi so pardon if this is bad form. Here are some shots of Katrina that I think capture the essence of what we saw. There was a 34 foot storm surge that washed away most of the houses. Debris was moved miles from where it had previously been attached to the earth. Surreal is an understatement.
posted by MapGuy at 9:11 AM on June 20, 2006

I also wish this was one of the before/after sites that aligned the images. And didn't force the after shot to fade in...
posted by thejoshu at 9:22 AM on June 20, 2006

Amazing. I drove through the Biloxi and Waveland area a few months ago and all I kept thinking was I wonder what it used to look like. Now I know.
posted by photoslob at 9:23 AM on June 20, 2006

So, what's the likelihood of another one of these blowing through? Was Katrina a freak storm or just the tip of the iceberg?
posted by doctor_negative at 10:01 AM on June 20, 2006

Browster makes navigation pretty easy for a site like this.
posted by PHINC at 10:04 AM on June 20, 2006

I am new to MeFi so pardon if this is bad form.

There's nothing wrong with linking to personal sites in your comments as long as you're doing it to add extra information to the topic at hand and not to--you know, drive up your advertising revenues.

Thanks for the excellent pictures.
posted by ColdChef at 10:32 AM on June 20, 2006

Thanks for the post! Do you Know if Rosie O'Donnell ever built that park for the trailer city?
posted by haikuku at 11:20 AM on June 20, 2006

She did. Sorry I haven't taken pictures yet. I'll swing by there this week.
posted by ColdChef at 11:24 AM on June 20, 2006

ColdChef: good stuff. I'll check out more at lunch...heartbreaking and valuable stuff, and it feels petty to say that I'll wait 'til it's convenient, but that's life, eh?

mapguy: definitely a value add to the thread, as ColdChef said. Thank you for posting your images.

If the FPP's site owner shows up: yes, do please consider using another gallery app for these. Please, please, please.
posted by batmonkey at 11:41 AM on June 20, 2006

I too have a number of shots from Biloxi and Gulfport and environs up in a post-Katrina gallery, but all shots were taken in mid-May, rather than immediately after the disaster. The scenes are still, however, not pretty. Get a load, for instance, of the US 90 bridge between Biloxi and Ocean Springs.

(Last I had heard, there was a holdup in the bridge's demolition and reconstruction, given disputes over whether to rebuild it as it was or to make it a six-lane, high-rise bridge. But an article from the Jackson MS daily says bids on a six-land bridge were let last week, and that the project should be at least nearly complete--that is, open for limited travel--by November 1997.)
posted by raysmj at 1:13 PM on June 20, 2006

My folks live in Picayune, MS and my sister and her family in Pearl River, LA, just outside of Slidell. Both are just across Pontchartrain. On the weekend after the storm my father-in-law and I drove down from Pennsylvania to bring my sister supplies and bring my folks back to PA until things had settled down. I didn't have my camera, but as a second thought, bought a disposable camera at a gas station on the way down. These are those pictures from my flicker site. The first three in the set have a description of the trip and what it was like trying to get down there. I wrote it the night after I got back. I was a little loopy.

My family was very lucky and both of their homes escaped a lot of the devastation around them. Now they're dealing with an infrastructure crisis. The population of their towns has quadrupled in the last 9 months with the influx of refugees and recovery workers. I just got back from a conference in NOLA and a visit with my family and the thing that struck me was that while recovery is occurring, it's slow and seems dependent on the economic status of the community. Though not entirely as this picture proves. This Flicker set contains pictures from my trip last week. I wouldn't call either set truly representitive as I wasn't really there to take pictures, and neither time did I have my own camera, but they might provide a sense of how things have and haven't changed.
posted by Toekneesan at 1:26 PM on June 20, 2006

Thanks ColdChef et. al. Photos were not my site. I contributed to the book but do not receive any benefit. My blog has no ads (does that crap actually make any money anyway?). If you have time check out the other good folks I worked with down there. We self funded volunteers, built a free wireless internet and VOiP network with donated equipment and computers. Over 10,000 calls were placed from shelters in the first week alone. It is still operating. Good Stuff.

South of the high water mark I saw an America where there were no social, racial, political, or media agendas with spin. Just, mud, sweat and shoulders to the wheel. People helping people. Rest assured it will happen again. When it does, which side of that water line will you good folks be on?
posted by MapGuy at 8:02 PM on June 20, 2006

A Legacy of the Storm: Depression and Suicide
posted by homunculus at 11:35 PM on June 20, 2006