We decided it was good for our souls to see what happened to the Mississippi gulf coast ourselves, the area was about 100 miles from Summerdale so we made a day trip of it. We turned off I-10 at exit 15 in Alabama onto US90 and headed west. We started to see some broken trees here and there and a few blue tarp roofs, but didn't really see much until we hit the closed bridge to Biloxi, MS. That forced us to divert back to I-10 for a few miles. We took advantage of the diversion to have lunch and then headed down I-110 into Biloxi and turned west onto US90, which goes along the water.
Now we were where all the news pictures were taken. Miles and miles of destruction, about everything manmade was destroyed for 100 to 500 yards from the beach. The variance from 100 to 500 yards depended on the elevation rise since the major damage was from storm surge, so high points had less damage than low points. Whole areas had no traffic signals since they hadn't restored electricity to those places. Many of the big trees were still standing and leafed out. Bamboo stands didn't look like they took damage at all, bamboo is tough stuff. But few houses and buildings were standing. Beauvior, Jefferson Davis's house, was still standing but damaged. We just let the emotions roll over us and didn't bring out the camera. We were not the only ones who were touring the area, we could tell others had no reason to be there except to look. Finally we hit the road closed sign in Pass Christian and turned around. By now Bill was detached enough to bring out the camera:
This was new construction, it does not look like it will survive another hurricane:
More remnants:
There were signs, but the businesses were gone:
In Long Beach we turned inland:
This sign was ironic:
Inland the damage was mostly from wind:
We drove back to Summerdale lost in thought.
A while back we were sent a set of before/after pictures in email. They are accurate, here is a web page with them.