Not just the big easy

I just got around to reading a colleague's account of her travels through Mississippi last week. It's a sobering reminder that New Orleans is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to hurricane damage.

In d’Iberville, the stench is horrible. I’ve had my air conditioning off to save gas and to vent the fumes from my gasoline cans, but I have to turn it on even as I leave the windows cracked. The smell just hangs in the air, almost palpable. It’s horrible, all things rotten and spoiled and decaying and decomposing. It feels contaminated, and it brings home health officials’ concerns about disease and infection. I wonder, will this ever be the same beautiful bay again?

Across the bridge into the city, I see massive steel commercial fishing boats tossed ashore like toys. Remnants of clothes and paper and who-knows-what hang high in trees and in fences, looking eerily like prayer flags strung in the mountains of Nepal, and a little like high-school kids had TP’d the entire area.

A line of debris lies pushed up onto the shoulders of the road. Wood, kitchen items, toys, paint cans, you name it. Unbelievable, but the storm surge reached here, more than a mile inland. Beyond, houses on block after block are open all the way through, showing the path of the surf and the wind. And again, smashed buildings, one after another. The Boomtown casinos is torn apart, with green-felt gaming tables lying in the muck outside.