Our march along the Mississippi Gulf Coast demonstrated to me again the unutterable power of Mother Nature. As I mentioned before, when I first saw the extensive damage, riding to Mobile on the Greyhound Bus, it reminded me of the devastation I had experienced in late 2004, when I was blessed to survive the Tsunami in Sri Lanka. The only difference was that the rubble and destruction was Western 1st-World architecture with neon signs of fast food and motel franchises instead of 3rd-world South Asian adobe and thatched roofs.
Here are some broken houses in Biloxi, Mississippi:
Here are some of the broken houses in the Muslim village of Mutur on the south side of Trincomalee Bay on the Eastern Coast of Sri Lanka, where I lived for 20 months.
The power of the storm surge is awesome. Here is some carpet and rugs wrapped around tree branches in Gulfport.
In Mutur, I got this shot of a bike embedded in the wreckage of a house.
Here is the devasted Treasure Bay Casino. Notice the hole in the ship where the gaming floors were. There must be a hundred thousand dollars or so of coins buried in the sand from all the hundreds of slot machines that were in the casino.
In late 2001, I spent a night in the RV parking lot of the Treasure Bay while I was on the road after life as I had known it came to a crashing end with the desolution of my 22-year marriage to my third wife, Sara, and 9/11. I took this picture of the Treasure Bay Casino early one morning just before I hit the road.
Here is the Beauvoir, the last home of Confederate President Jefferson Davis that was built in 1852.
Here is what it looked like when I visited it in 2001.
All along the Gulf Coast were scores of mansions, antebellum, Victorian, modern, which had survived all previous hurricanes including the very destructive 1969 Hurricane Camille.
None of them survived Hurricane Katrina. The entire Gulf Coast looks like this.
Bay St. Louis, a once lovely town is nothing but rubble.
In 2001 when I traveled through it I got a latte at CB's Coffee House next to the New York Restaurant, home of fine, casual dining, which does not exist today.
The destruction in Pass Christian and Bay St. Louis in particular looked like the destruction of the French Garden Guest House that I was staying in for the Christmas Holiday of 2004. I had been sitting in the right hand corner of the veranda having a pot of coffee, enjoying the calm, beautiful morning, when I left to go on a bike ride inland to visit a 2500 year old temple complex about 15 minutes before the Tsunami wave totally destroyed the Guest House.
Here is a smashed car in Bay St. Louis.
We heard that out in the Gulf of Mexico they have located some 150 submerged cars via GPS Satellite system. Let's, see, what's the ratio of cars equipped with GPS systems to those not, 1 to 20? 1 to 50? There are a lot of cars scattered out in the Gulf. We saw many miles of abandoned vehicles that had been submerged in storm surges or floods. One thing for sure -- I wouldn't buy a used vehicle in Alabama or Mississippi or Louisianna for at least ten years.
Cindy marched with us Thursday and Friday from Bay St. Louis, Mississippi and into Slidell, Louisiana. I was most honored to be in her presence. I also was most privileged to share some time with Camilo Mejia, the first GI to resist going back to the senseless Iraq War and served six months in prison for his convictions. He is one of the most humble and dedicated heros, dedicated to peace, that I have ever had the opportunity to know.
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