SJ
New member
Well I have finally made it back. Hurricane "Katrina" was definitely an experience to say the least. We live right in what they call ground zero. Our whole town (Long Beach) is pretty much gone. God Blessed us as we are among the few who still had a home to go back to after the storm. Our home wasn't even damged hardly at all as a matter of fact (Praise God). We lived in a tent for 10 days in our front yard though until we could get gas enough to run our generator so we could move back in doors for some much needed rest and A/C. It was in the high 90's everyday for most of the time following the storm. We now have electricity, water, sewage, cellular service and got our cable back 2 days ago. We still don't expect our landline phones back for several more weeks though. The ares around here especially the coastline is devastated way beyond what the TV could ever show you. If you have ever seen pictures of Hiroshima or Nagasaki after they drop the Atomic bomb than you can get a fairly good idea what it looks like down here. Everything for at least 40 miles on our coastline from Biloxi to Waveland, MS. has been totally obliterated, I don't mean damaged I mean "GONE", almost every house and every business is totally destroyed on the coast, the rough estimate right now is somewhere around 70,000 homes totally destroyed but that number is conservative for sure. All of our main bridges that span the Bay of St. Louis and Biloxi Bay are totally gone. Most of my wife's family either lost homes completely or they are damaged beyond being livable, 60% of our Church family lost their homes including the Pastor, he only had a slab left. God Blesses again in that we haven't lost any family at all and no friends that we know of yet, some are still MIA. Since we still don't have landline phones yet we changed our internet service over from BellSouth to CableOne and have a new email address for those who do email me from time to time. Our new email addy is We are running our hunting consultant business from our mobile phone of 1-228-234-2276. Also regardless of all the hype the media has put out about the government and FEMA botching everything here on the MS Gulf Coast they have been wonderful to us. Sure it hasn't been perfect and there has been some glitches but "NO-ONE" expected anything like "Katrina". "Camille" was always the bench mark used for planning for disaters here but by what the "Camille survivors here have told me "Camille" wasn't squat compared to "Katrina". "Katrina" caught everyone off guard. We had a (storm surge is what the officials are calling it but eye witnesses are calling it a sunami)that cleared 30 foot trees and wiped out everything when it hit ("Camille only had a storm surge of 23 feet at it's highest). We had houses completely torn to shreds by horrific water where there has never been water even remotely close to ever before. Fema, the Federal and State Government, Churches and all the volenteers have brought in more food, water and oither needed supplies then we can eat or use and have pretty much supplied us with most of everything we have needed. The worse glitches are getting something done for the ones still left homeless, we still have a lot of people stuck in shelters waiting for housing, or trailers or anything. The outporing of love and help from the volunteers who have showed up here by the tens of thousands from everywhere in the world to help us has been staggering and gives one a sense of pride that we live in such a wonderful and caring country. There are 1,000 good ones here to every bad one you hear about. We did get looted though before we coudl get back to our home, them I would like to meet face to face. We are alive and doing good considering, but so much better than many so I am not complaining, we were definitely Blessed. Thanks y'all for those who said the prayers that got us and will get us through this.
