BAY ST. LOUIS - It was just as I had been told by those who live in this west end of the Mississippi Gulf Coast: You have to come in person to see it in order to really understand the ravage Katrina visited upon the area, with its unique culture and landscape.
Scenes and places that I fondly knew from many years of coming here - Bay St. Louis and Waveland, places that for two centuries were a refuge of peace and quiet for New Orleanians - were sadly no longer recognizable to me.
What was readily apparent to me on my visit last week was that an incredible force had angrily bombed this wonderful part of the world virtually back to its primeval state.
Shreds of clothing eerily left clinging from bare tree branches and crumbled sheet metal strewn everywhere amid what you know were places where people dwelled six months earlier are sights that will always stick in your memory.
Life goes on here, make no mistake about that. And there's a wonderful faith that Hancock Countians will not only survive but will prevail. But there's a subtle, pervasive sense of bewilderment of how those left to deal with it can best tackle the mountain of problems evident everywhere.
It's like trying to wrestle an octopus. Perhaps it's best to do one thing at a time and get it working again, maybe even better than before Katrina.
That's what Trapani's, "the Best Eatery in Bay St. Louis," has done. I was fortunate enough to be in town the day after Trapani's reopened for business in a refurbished location after being closed for six months.
Their menu would make any gourmand back in my hometown, the "big" city of Jackson, drool. I had the stuffed softshell crab, having a hard time deciding whether to have instead the broiled flounder or speckled trout. Apart from offering great food, the folks at Trapani's were wonderfully friendly, just happy to be serving people again.
Actually, a good news happening is what brought me down here and gave me a chance to make a long-delayed tour of the storm-devastated area as well as to visit with my old friend, U.S. Rep. Gene Taylor, now a local hero for how he pitched in to help others though his own home here was gone.
A $100,000 gift by Pfizer, Inc. was being presented to Hancock Medical Center to help replace critical medical equipment lost when Katrina six months ago swept three feet of brackish, dirty water through the medical facility. even though it was located on higher ground thought flood-safe.
I was invited to come down for the presentation and to see firsthand what had been accomplished to restore Hancock Medical as the key health care facility for a broad community, and then tour the area.
There are endless stories of Katrina heroism all along the Katrina-battered Mississippi Gulf Coast, and Hancock Medical Center is not without its own share of valiant cases where lives were saved amid the catastrophic event, and in its aftermath.
For starters, Hancock Medical's staff succeeded in saving all 35 resident patients - some in intensive care - who could not be evacuated from the hospital beforehand to other facilities out of the area when hurricane warnings went up.
As the eye-wall passed and rising floodwaters swarmed though the building's corridors and knocked out the hospital's generators, patients plus others (one a 600-pound woman) who had sought refuge in the medical center were moved in darkness to the top floor.
For several days after the floodwaters had receded, HMC's staff around the clock treated dozens of frightened survivors from throughout the broader community who had sought shelter there. Some had come for miles by foot. In all, some 800 evacuees, in desperate need of water and food, poured into the facility.
While a scrub tech held a flashlight, surgeon Brian Anthony (not long back from Iraq) repaired an elderly man's severed radial artery. Even without air conditioning or running water or communications, HMC served as refuge of safety, hope and survival.
Meanwhile, 75 percent of the staff and physicians had lost their own homes, including Administrator Hal W. Leftwich, who now lives on the hospital parking lot in a travel trailer he has purchased.
HMC board member Robert Baxter tells how he saved his own life by hanging on branches of a live oak tree when the 25-foot flood surge hit Pearlington. As the floodwaters rose, Baxter, in his late 70s, climbed to higher branches and held on for five hours until he was rescued.
"Look for the white boxes," said our tour host as we drove along the chewed-up remains of the beachfront road along which gorgeous homes and stately mansions stood six months before. ("That was Pete Fountain's home … some of his clarinets were found over a mile away," says our host.)
As we go a mile and a half inland through formerly upscale and less affluent neighborhoods, the scene is the same: only an occasional concrete post or part of a brick pier remains.
The "white boxes" our guide referred to are the infamous FEMA trailers, 8-by-26-foot aluminum boxes which now serve as "home" for some 30,000 coastians whose homes were wiped away or gutted by Katrina's winds and huge tidal surge, which cut the widest swath of destruction ever seen in a natural disaster.
Municipal and county government offices now carry on business in tents or trailers, making more real just how devastated the tax base of this entire area is. As one who for over 50 years has closely watched how the wheels of government in Mississippi grind slowly, I fear that the Coast can't count on the state soon coming to its rescue.
