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Bay St. Louis Katrina Cleanup
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Bay St. Louis Katrina Cleanup
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Bay St. Louis Mississippi is a Gulf Coast town 50 miles NE of New Orleans which was hit by Hurricane Katrina. The resulting devastation to the town includes the displacement of more than 3,000 of its residents and damage to 95 percent of its homes. Steve Bryant, the pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Vicksburg, Miss says, "The pain of people is beyond imagination. and it will take years before this state recovers. Much of Mississippi was practically third world before Katrina. Now is definitely such."
Liberty Corner Presbyterian Church is sending 4 teams to Bay St. Louis between Oct. 22 and Nov. 20 to help with disaster relief coordinated by the Bay St. Louis Presbyterian church. See Article at MSNBC
Bay St Louis is one of the most severely damaged towns in Mississippi. New Orleans got more press coverage because of the noteriety of the city, levee breaks and flooding, but the eye of the storm passed just 10 miles to the west of Bay St. Louis (pop. 8,209) and Waveland (pop. 6,674), putting the cities squarely in the northeast quadrant of the eye wall Ð the counterclockwise maelstrom where the winds are strongest and the storm surge most ferocious.
Experts estimate that it was still packing winds of 125 mph or higher when it reached the Mississippi coast. But the big killer was a storm surge of at least 30 feet, with wind-whipped waves of seven feet on top of that.
One house had 14 feet of water 3 miles from the gulf, but there were other houses within 1.5 miles of the gulf which only had 5' of water. It will take 12 to 18 months to rebuild the Hwy 90 bridge between Bay St. Louis and Pass Christian across the bay. One full month after the hurricane, two gas stations are the only stores open for business. Miraculously, the Presbyterian church, which sits less than fifty yards from the ocean, is largely intact. A few floor tiles had to be removed and one window pane and a few roof shingles blew away, but the church itself does not need much repair. The houses of the members are a different story. The Reverend Ted Hanawalt lost his house, along with the most of the members. This is a church with 71 members, out of which only three families remain in town, all others are staying with their children or friends in other towns.
Volunteers are cleaning out the water-logged house. All the furniture, clothing and other personal goods had to be discarded, as they had been under water for a few days followed by a few weeks of 95-degree weather. The houses have to be gutted to the studs before an assessment could be made whether they can be saved. Sources: Personal visit, A letter from Simon and Haejung Park at Presbyterian Mission Connections and MSNBC Article.
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