Blogotional

The conversation is endless and even before the job is near done, the fingerpointing has begun concerning what's going on, and what is apparently not going on, on the Gulf Coast.

First of all, everyone is focused on New Orleans, when the disaster is so much larger -- that should tell you something. Consider this email that came into my inbox from friends of friends in the area. It is truly terrifying, particularly if you have been there and know the landmarks the writer mentions.

"I just got back from a 3.5 hour flight over the Mississippi Gulf Coast from Bay St. Louis to Pascagoula.

I have no words--I'm not sure there ARE words--for what I just saw. I am in shock. The destruction of the Gulf Coast was of a level that Hurricane Camille only began to begin to approach.

Personal. Janet's and my house is gone. An oak tree from the east side is lying on top of what looks like a section of the roof. Whatever else is left is in a pile of debris at the CSX railroad tracks to the north, along with every other house in the neighborhood, save the one house next door (Archie & Margaret's). Theirs is a spanish-southwestern style built in 1925, and it used to stand out against all the other homes. Now it IS the only other home. The windows are all out, and it looks pretty bad. Grasslawn, an antibellum home on the other side, is gone.

Going down the coast from east to west...

Ocean Springs has heavy damage along the beach. I don't know how far back it goes.

Biloxi. Point Cadet is gone. The Hwy 90 bridge is gone. The old hwy bridge is gone. The railroad bridge is gone. All spans are down--every last one of them--except for the drawbridge in the middle. The Biloxi Casinos are mostly standing, but the barge from the Grand is north of hwy 90 now. Mary Mahoney's Restaurant is standing, but most of the surrounding buildings are gone. The Seashore Manor Methodist retirement home is the only structure standing on that stretch of beach. The windows are even unbroken. The Broadwater Marina is gone. What's left of the President Casino barge is north and west, and across Hwy 90. Edgewater Mall is standing, but it has large holes in the structure, high, all along the south side. Edgewater Village strip mall is gone. Everything south of the railroad tracks has severe damage, if it's still standing. I didn't see the Back Bay area.

Gulfport. The Legacy Condominiums are standing, and apparently did quite well. Nearly everything around them is gone. The VA hospital complex did well. Most of the homes on either side of it are gone. The water went beyond the railroad tracks in multiple places near there. There is a continuous debris pile pushed up against the tracks all along what used to be Second Street. Almost every house there is gone. Downtown is mostly standing, but there has been water up to the tracks. The roofs of most of the buildings have visible damage. The Hancock Bank building and the MS Power Co building seem to have fared the best. The Baptist and Presbyterian churches looked good. I couldn't see the GPT Methodist church. The new courthouse appears to be undamaged, including the windows. The harbor is mostly gone. The roof of Marine Life is down. The shipping terminal warehouses are there, but they have debris on the roofs, indicating that they were underwater. The Grand Casino hotel (and Oasis) did very well, but the casino barge is blocking Hwy 90 to the west. The homes in West Gulfport did better than on the east side, but only for a space. Approaching Long Beach it gets worse quickly.

Keesler AFB and the Gulfport CBC. One hangar at Keesler looks bad. The rest of those structures look intact from where we were flying.

Long Beach. Everything from about 1000' south of the RR tracks is gone. The Baptist Church is standing, but gutted. St. Thomas has parts standing, but it is mostly gone. USM Gulf park looks pretty good, and it is the only structure on that section of Beach. The Methodist Church is standing, and the New Life Center looks good. The roofs look good. Water came up as high as the house next door to the Associate Pastor's parsonage. Everything south of Magnolia Street is gone. North of Magnolia Street, there is heavy damage up to about 1000' of the tracks. On my old street of Buena Vista Dr., my old house is the first one standing. It appears from the air to have had water up to the second story. The High School, Middle School, and Reeves Middle School appear undamaged. Harper McCaughan is hurt, but I couldn't see how bad. It probably had water, and it is about at where the survival line norms. North LB did much better, but there was lots of roof damage. Pecan Park seems to have fared the best. The Wolf River is flooded so badly I couldn't see any structures above water. It is up to within a couple of feet of the I-10 bridge--enough that I worry for the integrity of the bridge. The harbor is gone. Every structure in the vicinity of the harbor is gone.

Pass Christian. The Wal Mart is standing, but it has been underwater. Some downtown buildings are standing. St Anne's is there, but it has had water over it. From the LB line westward, everything south of Second Street is gone. The only exception was Scenic Drive, where about half of the houses are standing. From Downtown west I saw nothing standing anywhere in Pass Christian. The only houses I saw standing in West Pass were the newer ones on the North Side, near the Bay of St. Louis, and those two new millionaire acres-looking houses on the beach about halfway to Pass Marianne. The Du Pont site is there, but we didn't fly north far enough to assess.

The Hwy 90 bridge over the Bay of St. Louis is down. Every span. The railroad bridge is down. Every span.

Bay St. Louis appears to have had water in the downtown area. Most of the buildings are standing, but most have roof damage. All the homes southwest of the downtown area, along the beach road, are gone. The homes west of the beach road had the heaviest roof damage I saw anywhere except in East Biloxi.

Waveland. We didn't fly all the way to Waveland, but I could see down the beach road quite a ways, and I saw nothing standing.

Other. Hwy 90 is washed out in sections all along the coast, from Biloxi to Bay st. Louis. Huge sand drifts obscure many more sections of pavement. There is a lot more natural sand along the beach, maybe another 500-1000'. Ship Island is mostly gone. There is a clump of trees on a sand bar on the east, and there is a sand bar on the west. Fort Massachusetts is there, but has sand berms about 15' high along the southwest side. Cat Island has a new shape. It doesn't have "fingers" any more. It is just a continuous stretch, like Ship Island used to be, only with trees.

My estimates. Based on the debris lines and what I know of the geography of the MS Gulf Coast, the tides were indeed in the 30-foot range, all the way from Bay St. Louis to Biloxi. Based on the damage I saw to roofs, and to structures unaffected by water, the winds would have had to be greater than 100 knots, possibly as great as 140 knots. I couldn't see looting/looters, but I could see the opportunity for it. The casualty numbers, when they come in, will be staggering.

In closing. I have never seen any manner of destruction like this. It is bad in Biloxi and Gulfport...as bad as anything I saw after Hurricane Camille in 1969. The devastation of Pass Christian is indescribable. The news reporting only scratches the surface.

Janet and I are praying for the survivors on the ground there. Please join us. I will report more later. Please pass this report along to others who have evacuated, and need to know."

The New York Times of all places has a pretty decent report on some of the technical issues involved in this circumstance. On that subject, I have some relatively random thoughts that people may want to consider.

The last time any where in the world that city was rapidly and efficiently evacuated was Pripyat (population 20,000-30,000 about 20% the population of NOLA), next to Chernobyl. Consider -- it was evacuated at gun point. Citizens were allowed to bring only what was on their backs at the risk of being shot. It was a total dictatorship, the government owned every bus in the country -- when they wanted them in Pripyat -- all it took was a phone call. Here it takes negotiations, contracts, etc. Shall I go on.

Second thing to think about. Disaster response is a local government matter -- the fed can only intercede at local request, something that is typical and normally routine. However, Louisiana has a very long and very storied history of corrupt local government on the state and municipal level. It will be a while before we know what, if any, role that may or may not have played in the mess, but I won't be surprized. There is an old Louisiana joke about it being every governor's right to plead guilty in a court house named for him. I wonder if these events will result in significant reform, and if so how? What, if any, role can the federal government play in such reform? Some of you legal scholars out there have any ideas? The destruction is widespread, but only NOLA seems to be in chaos -- that should tell us something.

Third thing to think about. Last time our nation even thought about moving anywhere near this number of people around, and supplying them with sustenance, it was the military in Iraq. Consider that it took a year to generate the material and equipment necessary prior to Desert Storm. Operation Iraqi Freedom took several months but then we had the majority of the supplies and material cached in the region and only had to put the soldiers in place. And yet, we have people that expect similar action, on a civilian level, in a matter of days?!

Fourth and final thing to think about. NOLA is a geographically and geologically inaccessable city. Right now there is no way to go heading north, east, or south -- there is only west. Makes things even tougher than they are already. I worry about the same thing if "the Big One" ever hits in LA -- west is water, east and south is god-awful desert and all ways out mean climbing mountains....

Where do we go from here? Hugh Hewitt has some governmental and civilian ideas. They all sound good to me, and I am sure there will be more, and in some cases better, ideas to come. Whatever we have to do, we have to find a way not just to see to the physical needs, but the spiritual as well. The soul sickness is obvious and healing is needed.