Six Months After Katrina... Andy Williamson

Six Months After Katrina
By Andy Williamson

It’s hard to believe it’s been more six months since hurricane Katrina hit the Mississippi gulf coast. It’s been amazing to see how much progress has been made already, but, there is still so much more work we need to do before the coast and it’s people can fully recover.

When Katrina hit, I was here at M. P. B. studios in Jackson helping produce overnight radio. We were trying to help the thousands of evacuees listening across the state about the latest traffic conditions, where to find gas, and how to get to the few hotels in the state that still had vacancies. We took a lot of phone calls and all the while kept tabs on Katrina’s every move. We had 100 mph winds here, and as I looked out the window from time to time, I could only imagine what it must have been like on the coast.

Eight days later, Adam Daniel, Randy Kwan, and I got a chance to see what it was like for ourselves. The damage was shocking. We camped out for three days at the E.O.C in Gulfport along side hundreds of folks from as far away as Alaska and New York who came down to help out. During that time, we shot a great deal of High Definition video and took lots of still pictures from Ocean Springs to Bay Saint Louis. Randy even got to shoot areal footage as he rode along in a Ms. National Guard helicopter, but, as clear and descriptive as those images were, they still could not grasp what it was like to actually be there.



I remember Adam and I shooting video of the huge Grand Casino barge lying on top of Highway 90 on an early Thursday morning. We saw tractor trailers twisted like pretzels, debris everywhere, and waded through thousands of empty Mazzola corn oil containers to get shots of what was left of the houses on 12th street in downtown Gulfport. The whole experience seemed almost surreal in the way that the destruction was so bad that it was difficult to orient yourself because nearly everything you remembered along Highway 90 was simply gone. What once was a beautiful coastline, looked like a bomb had gone off and nothing was recognizable any longer.



We were able to drive down Highway 90 a little way to tape more video, but, that proved to be an adventure in itself. The road was buckled in many places and completely gone in others. Mile after mile all we saw were so countless concrete slabs where houses once stood. What trees were still standing had twisted metal, clothes, and plastic wrapped around them making the whole area look like something out of your worst nightmare. Seeing all this made our thoughts and prayers quickly turn to the people who once called the coast home.



When we reached Bay Saint Louis and stood next to what was left of the Highway 90 bridge. We and walked through it’s once beautiful downtown, and the affect of it all was enough to literally take your breath away. I found myself at a loss for words when I tried to describe what we had seen to Gene Edwards during a live radio interview later that morning.



A lot has changed since then. During those six months, I have been producing gardening stories for the Beyond Katrina program with Felder Rushing and Dr. Dirt from M .P. B.’s Gestalt Gardener radio show. Each time we shoot a story on the coast, we always try to look for positive. The people and the environment took quite a hit, but, both are a lot more resilient than you might expect, and some times the things you get to see can inspire us all. The sight of sunflowers blooming among the ruined beachfront houses in Biloxi was a perfect example. (See the video of this here) It taught us that no matter how bad things may have gotten, nature, and the good folks on the Mississippi gulf coast will find a way to come back and thrive again.