We are Art & Masumi Williams. We live in a town named Diamondhead, which is located in Hancock County, Mississippi. The eye of Katrina covered all of Hancock County in fact the center of the eye was in Lakeshore, Ms.~8 miles from here. First, some demographics, as I know them. There are 3 counties that comprise the Ms Gulf Coast, they being West to East, Hancock, Harrision & Jackson county. Population of the 3 is about 280,000. Estimates published yesterday, 15 Sep 05, out of the ~170,000 dwelling units on the coast, a unit being a house like mine or a Walmart Superstore, 65,000 are destroyed, 40,000 have major damage (like XK and up) 50,000 have minor damage like my house (10K or less) and ~15,000 came through unscathed. If you have a Rand McNally Road Atlas look at the Ms Gulf Coast. Everything below US 90 to the Gulf of Mexico from the Louisiana State line to Pascagoula is almost 100 % destroyed. Everything from Interstate 10 South to the Gulf running the entire state (70 miles) is over 80% destroyed. Closer to home, here in Diamondhead, all homes south of I-10, some 300 or so are totally destroyed; all one can see is a slab here and there or a wall or a fireplace, whatever. North of I-10 there are about 2000 homes. Some 60% of them are either destroyed or have sustained major damage. Diamondhead was spared compared to the 4 other towns in Hancock County. Lakeshore, Waveland & Bay St Louis were almost 90 % destroyed and Kiln was about 70% destroyed. About 7 miles to the East of Diamondhead is the town of Pass Christian. They had the unfortunate luck of being on the starting edge of the NE Quadrant of the eye-wall, the absolute worst place to be in a hurricane. The next three towns just east of the Pass are Long Beach, Gulfport and Biloxi. Damage was sustained by a town in Florida named Navarre, which is about 150 miles East of Diamondhead, so just imagine what happened to New Orleans which is only 55 miles west of Diamondhead. The surge was as high as 32 feet at the coastline on top of which were 15foot waves. One of our friends has a home 9 miles from the Gulf . It is a house built on stilts that are 17 feet high on as piece of ground 5 feet higher than the Bayou. He and his wife stayed in the house. They got almost 4 feet of water inside their house, which means that the surge topped by waves was 26 feet high at a point 9 miles inland. Another friend lives about 2 miles from the Gulf and the surge went completely over the top of his house. Thank goodness they had decided to evacuate to Alabama. Although our house is only 1 & ½ miles from the Gulf, it is at 91 feet above sea level, hence no surge problems. Now let me start at the beginning. Saturday A.M. we knew from the Weather Channel that we were in for it. Diamondhead is at 89.6 degree longitude and that was the projected center of the eye. It did not miss by much. Masumi and I have been through many Hurricanes in the 14 years we have live in Mississippi, but we always came through pretty well intact as we are well above sea level and the right rear corner of our house is set on a 90 degree angle to the SE thus presenting more of a knife edge to the wind rather than a flat wall. That’s the way the house was located when I bought it, so someone up there was watching out for us, fools that we may be. So on Saturday, I closed up the storm shutters on all the downstairs windows and instead of just bolting them shut I decided to nail them shut, so I put 2 pieces of 1x4x18 on each shutter with 6 nails in each piece. Then I taped all the windows with Xs made of duct tape, put everything that was not anchored into the ground inside either the garage or greenhouse. Meanwhile Masumi was preparing inside by filling about 20 one gallon jugs with water, gathering up anything that did not need cooking or can opening, put a mattress in the master bathroom which is located downstairs in the center of the house. You have to get through 4 walls in any direction to get to this room plus two ceilings and one strong floor to get to it from the top. We also put in one bag of flashlights, important papers, like insurance documents, wills, check books, stock & fund account data, additional underwear, and an FM radio tuned to the Weather Channel. Woke up Sunday AM, Sun was out but we all knew Katrina was coming. The roads going north were clogged but about 20% or our summer population in Diamondhead decided to stay and ride it out. At about 2 in the afternoon it got a little windy and the first rain band hit. We got about 2 inches of rain in about 30 minutes. Then the wind slowly started to pick up with additional rain mixed in. We watched the weather channel until about 10PM during which time the winds increased little by little. They were blowing about 60MPH when we went to bed for not much sleep. We got up at 4:30AM and my satellite TV was still working. It went out at 5:02AM. By that time the sustained winds were over 100 MPH. We got the good stuff at about 8:00AM Monday, sustained winds of between 125 & 135MPH (we found this out later)-gusts up to 175 MPH. This lasted until about 11:00AM when we got into the eye. The winds sub-sided somewhat, maybe to 80-90MPH and no gusts. At about 1:00PM in the afternoon, we came out of the eye and got fairly heavy winds again for about an hour. At 4:00PM, Masumi and I went outside and walked around in about 40MPH winds and looked our house over and then started looking at the neighborhood. Little did we know that the Hurricane had spawned about 150 tornado type funnels on the MS Gulf Coast of which about 18 hit Diamondhead. All homes in Diamondhead must be built on ¼ acre lots or larger. Most of us have l/2 acre lots. There are about 6 house visible from our house on our streeet and 3 or 4 if we look out at the street that is our main drag so to speak versus ours which is a side street. 3 houses away we saw a house with not much of a roof and 2 walls gone-hit by a tornado. We have a lake about 150 feet from our house, about 25 feet lower than our elevation. It is normally 100 x 250 meters. It was still about 100 meters wide but overflowed its 6 foot high bank and now was over 1 mile long. Our street slopes down about 100 meters from our house and every house that had an elevation that was 10 feet less than ours was swamped. Some had water in them as high as 10 feet. Likewise, you could see the path the tornado had followed. All the trees, mostly pines that are 60 to 80 feet tall were snapped in two about half way up, just like you would see a wooden matchstick snapped in half. Trees not hit by tornadoes were mostly uprooted or had cracked trunks near their base. I lost about a dozen trees, all between 30 and 60 feet high. Tuesday, the day after, the sky was clear and it was hot. Heat index was 107 degree. We heard via FM radio that "help was on its way" to MS but that New Orleans was in deep do do! The levies were breached and the entire city was slowly but surely filling up with Lake Ponchatran. But we had our own problems. Our neighbor across the street is a Lt. in MS Marine Resources and his wife a long time school teacher. He had the only cell phone around that worked. We both put out our portable generators and by gosh they both started on the first pull. Got them hooked up to a couple of Ref/freezers and we were invited to join them in a little ride around where ever we could get to in Diamondhead. Within a mile radius of our homes we found many houses that had been swamped by water. It seems that if you were near any rill, bayou or any other natural body that was at sea level, the surge just fingered its way up that waterway and rose to surge height. I have a golfing friend whose house has a tiny rill about 30 feet from it, but unfortunately the rill is only 8 feet lower than his house. We never see more than 6 inches of water in it as it is a hazard that runs across a couple of the holes on the golf course. His house ended up with over 8 feet of water in it. We went down another street and saw where 8 houses right in a row had been decimated by a tornado. We have a condo complex bordering one of the holes on the golf course and with the exception of shingles and felt paper off the roof, they looked fine till you got to the middle of the complex. There, a tornado had cut 4 units out, almost like one would cut a piece out of a cake. I could tell you a hundred more stories, but will not do so as we hear the storms aftermath got great coverage by TV. Speaking of TV, my US TV dish was destroyed, but our Foreign TV dish looked OK so about 3 days after the storm we plugged a set into the generator and watched the coverage of the damage assessment via TV from NHK Tokyo. Who performed and who did not!!!!!!!!!!!! The next day the local police, people like Marine and Wildlife patrol officers plus some of the churches, went into high gear. The police with help from volunteers set up temp shelters. Our Waveland Walmart superstore had 16 feet of water in it, but as soon as it went down, people went in and got all the camping equipment, wet as it was and set it up in the store parking lot. Church volunteer groups started showing up with food, blankets, clothes, etc. I remember 2 groups in particular, one was from Darlington, SC and the other from Au Claire, Wisconsin. How they got here so quick, I’ll never know. By Wednesday, ice, water and MREs (the new K rations) were arriving with National Guard troops plus truck caravans loaded mostly with water and ice were arriving like gang busters from Florida. Our golf men’s association organized traffic control for those trying to get water, ice and food. MEMA also showed up and went to work. There was no electricity or water or gasoline, etc, etc, etc . It became strictly a cash economy. Luckily, I usually keep 6 to 800 dollars in cash in the house just for emergencies. Our friends from Waveland whose home was completely underwater from the surge somehow returned from Birmingham, Alabama, so we had them as house guests for a couple of days. During that time, the man and I went to his home. The interior was in shambles and we retrieved some of the items they had hoped to find. We emptied out the ref/freezers into trash bags, put them out at the curb (all this over a two-day period). While we were there on the second day, someone with whom he works came by looking for them. He invited them to stay at their home in Alabama and commute with him back and forth to his job in Gulfport. Off he and his wife went to Gulf Shores Alabama. They are commuting now and again back to their gutted home to continue to salvage as best they can. The entire area is covered with a muddy slime about 6 inches deep which holds onto your boots like a suction cup. The entire coast south of Hwy 90 smells like rotten eggs and one sees large (10-12 inches long) dead fish all over the place adding to the aroma. Add to that the smell of food removed from refrigerators plus ref/freezers still loaded and one gets quite a perfume. The next day, which was Friday, I now had some gasoline as the stations were open, usually waited at least 1 hour to get gas as there were long lines, a $50.00 cash only limit on purchases plus pumping was slow as they were using generators, due to no electricity. Went to check on another couple that we know, the ones who live in the house on stilts where the water got up to a total level of 26 ft. Low and behold, they were still there. He is 80 and she is 70 (on oxygen due to an immune system disorder). Invited them over to the house until they could get squared away with FEMA, whom although they had shown up here in Mississippi, were still so disorganized that they we doing nothing but waiting for word from Washington-this is almost 5 days after the storm was over. These are the same people that are under our fearsome Homeland Defense Management. (Maybe if the storm had confined itself to only hitting airports we might have had a better chance!) They stayed with us for a period of nine days due to a whole bunch of comedies of errors, but they finally got squared away with FEMA, their insurance co. etc. The Red Cross got them a motel room in Mobile Alabama, got the lady a bunch of oxygen cylinders, etc, etc. The reason I checked with them is that whenever a hurricane is coming our way, we let them park one of their cars next to the north wall of our brick garage. Although it is out in the open on grass, it still gives them more protection from water and wind than they can get on the Bayou where they live. So far it’s always worked, even this time. In rereading what I’ve written so far, I forgot to mention a couple of organizations that deserve kudos, namely the Red Cross, Salvation Army and a number of Medical Group Volunteers from Illinois & Tennessee. Due to laws enacted at the request of insurance groups that lobby the hell out of congress (lots of campaign contributions), these volunteers were not covered by their malpractice insurance if they practiced outside of the state that they were licensed to practice in. Most of them did anyway. I got a tetanus shot from a Dr. from Memphis and false teeth supplies from a Dr. from Oregon. No one programmed our great Mississippi Governor on his options in an emergency, so it took him over 12 hours to kick into gear some vital services that could have been brought to bear quicker. The General in charge of the Miss National Guard did not wait for our Governor to issue orders, he just went ahead, mobilized and moved out before Haley knew what was happening. MEMA is tremendously well organized. It is filled with retired Colonels, Generals and Master Sargeants who know how to organize and get things moving in an emergency. They were the ones that by hook and by crook set up emergency evacuation centers in parking lots, staffed them and kept things orderly. We are all watching to see what will happen in Louisiana once those folks are allowed once again to go home. It is now 12 days after Katrina-no more long lines to wait in for gasoline, no more noisy generators going all day and all night, our house is air conditioned, we are so lucky, compared to so many. The only supermarket in Hancock County that is open is in Diamondhead, it’s almost fully stocked. We have a bunch of them all around us during normal times, now only this one to serve an entire county of some 30,000 people. Only its not 30,000 people as I would say at least 20,000 are either still out of state or are in evacuation centers where they are being fed by volunteer organizations or are eating MREs. My daughter drove down from Minneapolis, MN and arrived last night with some Japanese food supplies and medicine that we both need but are unable to get as the Pharmacies plus our Insurance Drug supplier uses only the US Mail and they are not yet up to speed. Should be up and running in a few more days. What am I doing all day long? Cutting limbs off trees and stacking them by the side of the road around our house. We live on a corner so I have a pile of tree limbs that is over 100 feet long, six feet high by about 8 feet wide. I’m waiting to hear if the chain saw that I ordered will be in today or not. FEMA will be by within the week. As I write this letter, Masumi and my daughter are now in Biloxi, getting food vouchers from the Red Cross. My US Satellite TV is scheduled to be fixed on the 10th of October, and telephone service is scheduled to be restored on the 21st of November. We got a new cell phone provider the other day, got rid of Cingular/Bell South-(terrible service) and have signed up for Cellular South instead. Hopefully, we will be back on line shortly thereafter. My little summary barely gives justice to all that I have observed. The selflessness of so many people who gave aid out of the goodness of their hearts, versus the stupidity of those who we pay handsomely to do things correctly, is striking. ART 09/16/05 P.S. (My daughter made me put this in): I have promised and learned from this experience that if there is ever another hurricane warning to this area of a category 3 or stronger, that I will evacuate. (We have not yet convinced Mitzie of this new standard, but hopefully she will come along as well!) |