Two weeks after storm, Mississippi finds its feet

By Crispian Balmer

GULFPORT, Mississippi (Reuters) – Southern Mississippi’s
clean-up operation moved into top gear on Monday, two weeks
after Hurricane Katrina devastated the coastline, with some
major employers reopening for business and debris clearance
starting in earnest.

Although much of the Mississippi state beachfront is little
more than a ribbon of rubble, life further inland is gradually
returning to normal.

Most of the roads are cleared of fallen trees, power has
been restored to all properties that can safely take
electricity and most homes now have running water and proper
sewage access.

“It is just absolutely amazing that 2 weeks after August 29
we are standing where we are at,” said Colonel Joe Spraggins,
director of civil defense in sea-facing Harrison county, one of
the worst-hit areas in Mississippi.

“The streets are open, we have red lights that are working.
The businesses are going back to work today, people are
actually going back to their jobs today,” Spraggins told a news
conference.

Among the businesses that reopened on Monday were the major
Northrop Grumman ship building yard near Pascagoula, local
radio said. The tax collection service also hung up “business
as usual” signs on their doors.

“I’m sure you wanted to hear that,” Spraggins said.

Although most of the world’s attention has focused on the
plight of New Orleans, Mississippi bore the full brunt of the
eye of the storm, which veered into the state at the last
moment, bringing with it a lethal sea surge.

DEAD AND MISSING

So far, rescue teams have recovered 162 bodies from
Mississippi’s six, southernmost counties, with just 46 of the
dead identified.

The local coroners office posted on Sunday a list of around
600 people reported as missing from the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
But with evacuees spread out in at least 34 U.S. states,
officials are confident that most of them will be found alive.

“The numbers of (new bodies) that we are finding everyday
are going down,” Spraggins said. “Hopefully we won’t find many
more.”

After days of carefully sifting through debris in their
search for storm victims, some of the worst-hit towns,
including Gulfport and Bay St. Louis, called in the big garbage
trucks on Monday to start the clear out.

Initial estimates suggest there are 16 million cubic yards

of hurricane debris littering the state of Mississippi,
enough to fill 1,000 football fields to a depth of 10 feet
each.

That estimate could be conservative, given the almost total
destruction in many places.

Officials at the seaside town of Pass Christian say only
300 of the 8,500-strong population have houses to return to.
Tommy Longo, mayor of nearby Waveland, says that of his 8,000
residents, just 25-30 families are left living in the wreckage.

In Bay St. Louis, Mayor Ed Favre reckons half of his town’s
4,000 homes were destroyed, while officials in the larger towns
of Biloxi and Gulfport think they probably lost even more
property.

But despite the scenes of catastrophic destruction,
residents and the authorities are all promising to rebuild.

“We will be better than ever, you can count on that,”
Spraggins said.