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In Pascagoula, Katrina claims a neighborhood
The homes on Beach Boulevard didn't have a chance.All that stood between them and the surging Gulf of Mexico at the height of Hurricane Katrina on Monday was the boulevard and a low concrete seawall. Wednesday, the boulevard, the seawall - and the gulf - were still in place. Almost all the houses were gone. People who lived on the boulevard, including Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., and their neighbors in the blocks behind them, said their community was a showplace in this city of about 25,000 people 110 miles east of New Orleans. Now its distinction is that it is probably the hardest hit neighborhood in the city, which was still without power and running water Wednesday, said the deputy police chief, Scott Ferguson. Officials say they do not know if anyone perished in the community as the gulf tried to wash it away. Some folks in the Beach Boulevard community said they believed some neighbors were unaccounted for. Many people stayed in their homes during the storm, including Nanette Clark, who lives several blocks behind the boulevard. She and her friend, Jayne Davis, spent the night and day of the storm moving furniture to a higher floor as water lapped, then pounded, at the front door. Some water did seep in, but the door held. Davis was glad she stayed there; her own home was one of the St. Charles Condominiums in nearby Biloxi, where 30 people were killed by the storm surge on Monday. On Tuesday night, Davis said, she and Clark shot at looters from the second-floor balcony of her pink house with gingerbread trim. Nobody was injured and the looters scattered, she said. Many hand-painted signs in that neighborhood warned looters that they were likely to be shot by armed homeowners. Police said they had detained dozens of people for looting, but had to let many of them go because the city's jail, and others in surrounding communities, could not be occupied because they lacked power and plumbing. "We treat each one on a case-by-case basis," Ferguson said Wednesday. Most of the looters, he said, "are the unusual clientele we have even when there isn't a storm." Stopping looters and restoring water and sewer service were high priorities for officials in Pascagoula on Wednesday. Just getting the sewers operable by restarting city pumping stations "would do much to improve morale," said the city attorney, Melvin Mitchell. He said the pumping stations would be restarted as soon as generators arrive to power them. And just as he said that Wednesday afternoon, two trucks carrying generators rumbled by the police station. "God bless generators," he said. Two of the region's economic engines are in Pascagoula, and both have been idled by the storm. Officials at the Northrop Grumman Ship Systems - the old Ingalls shipyard - and at the Chevron Oil Refinery were unavailable for comment Wednesday. But city officials said they expected that the plants would not return to full operation for weeks or even months. Northrop Grumman employs about 10,000 people, the refinery has about 1,200 employees. On Beach Boulevard on Wednesday afternoon, Lott could be found doing the same thing as his neighbors: picking through the debris that used to be his home. On a sandy patch of ground, he had carefully arranged family mementoes - a framed photo, a china serving plate, small brass sculptures. Across the debris field that was their backyard, his wife, Tricia, searched tearfully for anything else she could save. "It wasn't a fancy house," Lott said. "Just a Creole cottage, but it was built in 1854." Under the 200-year-old "big old momma tree," he said, he'd entertained former Vice President Dan Quayle and other political luminaries. "You can take the house," he said, "but you can't take decades of memories." Posted by: Dan Darling 2005-09-01 |
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