Sun Herald reporter's experiences-they word things well
Monday marks a week since Hurricane Katrina changed the face of South Mississippi while bringing out the incredible spirit of our beloved community. With their own personal losses weighing heavily on us, our Sun Herald staff has been reporting continuously so that you and the rest of the world can learn more about what we have suffered.
We have asked our team here to gather their thoughts about their experiences riding out the storm. Readers may even see a few familiar names as we've also asked former reporters who have come back to help us to tell us of their experiences as well.
---
I haven't cried yet. I came close Wednesday night, wandering a darkened parking lot and stunned to my core, after I learned about what had happened, what still was happening, in New Orleans. This is a double shot for me. I was born and raised in the Crescent City and lived on Seal Avenue in Biloxi for more than five years. I've called four places home in my life. Two are gone.
The image that'll stick with me from the Coast was my first, when I arrived here and descended from Interstate 110 in my car Tuesday afternoon: The beachfront, right by the lighthouse, familiar, iconic U.S. 90 and Porter. Devastation to the left, devastation to the right. In the middle stood the lighthouse, battered but still there. I wish I could tell you it brought me hope. Maybe, given enough time, I'll recall it again, and it will. But not now.
_Greg Lacour was a Sun Herald staff writer from 1993 to 1999. He writes for The Charlotte (N.C.) Observer.
---
Sleep doesn't come easy these hot summer nights. I lay still and pray for a breeze to come through my wide-open windows. I thank God I'm not in New Orleans.
I lay still and thank God that I still have a home. My carpet needed cleaning. I don't have to worry that any more. Katrina ripped off my shingles and water-logged my carpet. We've yanked up the carpet. Our concrete slab should be much easier to clean.
I lay still and force myself to forget, at least for a while, the things I've seen and heard: The sadness and fear of those with losses far worse than mine. The tired, grim eyes of those who spent their day recovering bodies or protecting us or otherwise trying to improve our diminished quality of life.
I start to worry about finding gas for my car or wondering what if we run out of food or water.
I flop over, lay still again and thank God my children are safe. They're frustrated. They're hot. They can't play their electronic gadgets. They're so-o-o bored. I remind myself I'm glad they're safe.
_ Robin Fitzgerald covers public safety in Harrison County.
---
I don't think much at all when I lie in my bed covered in sweat and cursing the heat like 500,000 others in South Mississippi. I do most of my thinking during the day when I drive through town and see people wandering the streets of East Biloxi- my beat, my people.
They all look like ghosts. They don't seem alive. They know what they saw was worse than anything they will ever see again. I know those noble pedestrians stayed for the storm. They're not looters, they just couldn't leave and now have nothing. They didn't have enough gas in their cars, some probably didn't have cars even when others were losing theirs to the surge.
They walk the streets, with mud on their calves and shoes because the surge nearly took them.They hurt, we all hurt together. So when I lay down and stare at my ceiling in West Biloxi, I just feel lucky it's there.
_Michael Newsom covers Biloxi and the military.
---
When I am trying to fall asleep, I also think a lot about my two years in a village in Togo, Africa, without electricity and running water amid squalor, poor sanitation and death. It gives my current situation perspective.
We are desperate now to get back to normal, to have electricity and running water. I know that whenever we get that back here, my village there - Kollo, if you want to know -_ still won't have it.
The first thing I think about when I lie down is the people I've met here who have lost loved ones to the storm because I have lost people close to me and I know there is almost no way to get over it. All you can do is heal yourself and move on.
_ Joshua Norman covers Long Beach and is the night reporter.
---
The last few minutes before I finally got to sleep on Sunday night will stay with me forever. Only a few of us stayed in the newsroom that night to take shelter from the storm and keep information coming out of South Mississippi.
Adrenaline fueled by fear finally gave way to exhaustion at around 2 a.m. I got in my sleeping bag and crawled under the desk, not confident that the roof would be there when I awoke. I had been listening to the police scanner, trying to keep abreast of emergency efforts. Sleep came hard. The crackling voices of police tapered off as roads became impassable. I was alone in the silence to survive.
_Mike Keller, covers environment and smart growth.
---
I'm still trying to process everything that happened. Communities destroyed, lives lost. A region changed forever by a force of nature.
It is hard to sleep. Very hard. I bet it us for all of us. You close your eyes and replay the events of the last week. How one thing morphed into another. There's some anger. There's more bewilderment. Why did this have to happen? What's next?
My home was destroyed. Lots of homes were destroyed. It was really weird, having everything I owned for a few days in my '99 Accord. Thankfully, Mike Keller took a bunch of my stuff and put it in his bachelor pad. Call me Mr. RV. I'll be hunkering down there for a while, in that big thing in the parking lot.
Thanks, Knight Ridder, for thinking about us. Now, it's time for the feds to do the same. For everybody.
_Jim Mashek is a sports columnist
---
I just had one of the most difficult experiences of my life.
A call came into the newsroom from a Gulfport resident who had evacuated to Tennessee before the storm. He wanted to know if the Water's Edge apartment complex on U.S. 90 had sustained any damage. A chill immediately crawled up my spine as I realized that this was one of my neighbors - or used to be, I should say. The chill then was replaced by a sinking feeling in my stomach when I told the man that his apartment, and everything in it, had been obliterated by Katrina's 25-foot storm surge. The remains of his building, and quite possibly all his belongings, were strewn throughout what was once the parking lot. The conversation was emotional, to say the least.
As a Southern California native, I once joked with people in the newsroom that I would take an earthquake over a hurricane any day. After witnessing and experiencing the devastation wrought by Katrina, the statement now holds very little humor, if any at all.
_Brandon M. Bickerstaff covers sports.
---
I'm one of those people who still goes to bed worried after Hurricane Katrina, wondering whether my sister Annemarie, a nurse at Oschner's Hospital, survived the deluge in New Orleans.
I pray I will have good news during the next week.
My house on Fournier Avenue in Gulfport was still there when I last saw it, but the amount of work to get it functional seems huge. When I think of the devastation to the whole Coast, and to our culture, it's enough to make me cry.
But there are blessings, and that's what keeps me going. Fortunately, I stayed with features editor Scott Hawkins and rode out the storm in relative safety. And thank goodness, I took my cats Goldfinger and Snickers with me, or they might have drowned in my house when the water started rising. To see those little guys playing with their toys now is a real comfort.
Still, I get overwhelmed when I think of the work to be done, by me and everyone else. If you focus on the big picture, you could get too depressed. It's just better to do everything you can on each day, and when that happens, maybe the big picture won't look so bad.
_Doug Barber is the interim sports editor.
---
Tears started to flow Sunday morning when I saw Maria Watson standing in front of the shell of St. Peter's by-the-Sea, the Episcopal church where I am a member. She and her husband, Julius Ward, had help me board up a big picture window on my house on Aug. 28. They told me they were riding out the storm at their beautiful old home on a small street between U.S. 90 and Second Street. I was concerned, but Maria said they would be fine.
After the storm, I couldn't imagine that anything could be fine for their street. I even felt a surge of guilt; what if one of the last things they did was an act of kindness on my behalf?
But there they were, ready to worship with other members who arrived around 8 a.m. in our new version of Sunday best: T-shirts, shorts and a strong sense of family connection.
Because we really are a family. The definition of family has become very fluid on the Mississippi Gulf Coast over the past week. Friends who banded together during the storm. Neighbors who offer help and humor to each other. Co-workers who lend shoulders and mingle tears - and open their homes to others. And church members who feel drawn to be with each other because it is Sunday morning.
These family reunions are as valuable to the recovery as any tarps, plywood and running water.
_Tammy M. Smith is a copy editor
---
The water came from the south, then from the west. It came at will, with no hope of stopping the storm surge as homes rolled into the Tchoutacabouffa River like dominos being tossed onto a parking lot during my childhood days.
When was Hurricane Katrina going to back off? How did she get this big?
How many people - friends and family - were going to lose their lives?
This wasn't supposed to happen to Biloxi, a beachfront community as pretty as anyplace in the world.
It did. It was sad.
Shortly after the storm surge made landfall around 11 a.m. on the upper end of Tchoutacabouffa River, it was evident that lives would be lost.
When daybreak came Tuesday, bodies (no actual count) were floating the bay waters of Biloxi. Where did they come from?
Some were from the old Biloxi Point, some from the upper Tchoutacabouffa.
Can anyone imagine sitting in a home - one that houses every cherished item you own - when the sound of a freight train approaches from the south. Was it a tornado or a surge? To say the least, it was the latter.
Water ripped through houses, lifting them at will. The homes will never rest in the same foundations.
Is there any reason to believe we can rebuild?
I can, but a dear friend of mine will not have that chance. He was swept off the top of his house, leaving behind a family of two. When the body was discovered, it didn't look like the same.
Somehow, some way, we must get through this deadly nightmare.
Personally, I've had my share of devastations, but I will be back. Bank on it.
_Al Jones covers outdoors and Southern Miss sports
---
After riding out the storm with half of my family at a friend's house, I made my way into work and hit the ground, ready to help tell South Mississippi's story of Hurricane Katrina and the aftermath.
Most of us had been in constant touch, either directly or through relays from other friends. But my nephew, John Sheets, had lost contact and we couldn't get through via cellphone, text message or land line.
About 5 p.m. that day, my phone beeped with a text message. John was safe.
I sobbed a couple of sobs of relief that my entire family had made it through the storm safely. That's what I think about when everything else starts to overwhelm me. My family is safe.
Everything else is negotiable.
_Kate Magandy is the city editor.
---
I've flown in a helicopter from state line to state line, and those images will haunt me for the rest of my life.
I thought I was prepared. I was not. I broke down for a while when we hit the ground the first trip. My mind couldn't process the loss of life, the destruction.
There are no words.
_Geoff Pender is the political editor
---
I moved away five years ago, but the Coast will always be a special place to me because it's where my children were young.
Both boys grew from infancy to adolescence here, and my most precious memories of them are set in in Ocean Springs and Biloxi, where we lived.
Hurricane Katrina took away some of their childhood. Front Beach Drive, where they spent many days throwing a cast net and fishing off the public pier, is gone, as is the familiar sight of the Biloxi skyline.
This is nothing next to the loss that other people have suffered, but I can't help feeling a little sad for my boys.
_Dan Duffey is a former city editor. He is now a bureau chief with the Charlotte (N.C) Observer.
---
My dad came to tell me that he'd gotten close to my house Tuesday, that it didn't look good. He gave me a camera with some pictures, but after one attempt to get them pulled off the disc, I just left it on the growing rubble pile on my desk.
It's strange, because it's all really just stuff to me: the TV, TiVo, stereo, CDs, computers,
The only things I'll really miss are the period civil rights movement books I'd collected, stuff that's out of print and can't be replaced.
Sunday, I got down probably to where my dad saw the place. There's a sea of rubble up 42nd Avenue in Gulfport a half-block north of my house, big rolls of paper, container trucks, pallets of plywood.
I looked down to climb up on something (which was probably the roof to my carport) to get a better look down the street and found two of my "things": an old shoe and a waterlogged and sun-dried Drive By Truckers CD case, sans music.
Those "things" I'll keep. I haven't lost every "thing."
_Don Hammack is a sports writer who has been running the Sun Herald's blog during the storm.
---
I keep losing stuff and worry about something happening to the quilts made my mama and my grandmas. They were folded on top of a wardrobe so they didn't get wet in the tidal surge.
The other day I left the windows on the truck open. A few drops of rainwater got on them and for a few minutes I thought the world was coming to an end. That's just crazy thinking.
I have to concentrate real hard to keep my stuff together. Staying busy helps. On Sunday, I popped a CD into the truck stereo because I couldn't bear hurricane news any more. Diana Krall's singing was like liquid valium.
_Tom Wilemon covers casinos and business.
---
God and I had a personal conversation on the 5:30 p.m. Tuesday flight from St. Paul, Minn., to the Mississippi Gulf Coast. I thanked him for saving the lives of my family who make their homes here and in New Orleans.
Five minutes after my arrival at the Sun Herald newsroom, I witnessed an employee getting the sorrowful news that a family member had been lost to the hurricane. I briefly closed my eyes and asked God to allow me the luxury of hanging on to my own grief and shock and sadness for a little while longer.
I've held onto it through an hour-long tour of the destruction in Ocean Springs and Biloxi, the towns where I spent my childhood. I held onto it during a brief reunion with my family still here on Coast. I'll hold onto it until I return to St. Paul and then I'll let it flow.
_Cathy Straight is a managing editor at the Pioneer Press in St. Paul, Minn. She is native of Ocean Springs.
We have asked our team here to gather their thoughts about their experiences riding out the storm. Readers may even see a few familiar names as we've also asked former reporters who have come back to help us to tell us of their experiences as well.
---
I haven't cried yet. I came close Wednesday night, wandering a darkened parking lot and stunned to my core, after I learned about what had happened, what still was happening, in New Orleans. This is a double shot for me. I was born and raised in the Crescent City and lived on Seal Avenue in Biloxi for more than five years. I've called four places home in my life. Two are gone.
The image that'll stick with me from the Coast was my first, when I arrived here and descended from Interstate 110 in my car Tuesday afternoon: The beachfront, right by the lighthouse, familiar, iconic U.S. 90 and Porter. Devastation to the left, devastation to the right. In the middle stood the lighthouse, battered but still there. I wish I could tell you it brought me hope. Maybe, given enough time, I'll recall it again, and it will. But not now.
_Greg Lacour was a Sun Herald staff writer from 1993 to 1999. He writes for The Charlotte (N.C.) Observer.
---
Sleep doesn't come easy these hot summer nights. I lay still and pray for a breeze to come through my wide-open windows. I thank God I'm not in New Orleans.
I lay still and thank God that I still have a home. My carpet needed cleaning. I don't have to worry that any more. Katrina ripped off my shingles and water-logged my carpet. We've yanked up the carpet. Our concrete slab should be much easier to clean.
I lay still and force myself to forget, at least for a while, the things I've seen and heard: The sadness and fear of those with losses far worse than mine. The tired, grim eyes of those who spent their day recovering bodies or protecting us or otherwise trying to improve our diminished quality of life.
I start to worry about finding gas for my car or wondering what if we run out of food or water.
I flop over, lay still again and thank God my children are safe. They're frustrated. They're hot. They can't play their electronic gadgets. They're so-o-o bored. I remind myself I'm glad they're safe.
_ Robin Fitzgerald covers public safety in Harrison County.
---
I don't think much at all when I lie in my bed covered in sweat and cursing the heat like 500,000 others in South Mississippi. I do most of my thinking during the day when I drive through town and see people wandering the streets of East Biloxi- my beat, my people.
They all look like ghosts. They don't seem alive. They know what they saw was worse than anything they will ever see again. I know those noble pedestrians stayed for the storm. They're not looters, they just couldn't leave and now have nothing. They didn't have enough gas in their cars, some probably didn't have cars even when others were losing theirs to the surge.
They walk the streets, with mud on their calves and shoes because the surge nearly took them.They hurt, we all hurt together. So when I lay down and stare at my ceiling in West Biloxi, I just feel lucky it's there.
_Michael Newsom covers Biloxi and the military.
---
When I am trying to fall asleep, I also think a lot about my two years in a village in Togo, Africa, without electricity and running water amid squalor, poor sanitation and death. It gives my current situation perspective.
We are desperate now to get back to normal, to have electricity and running water. I know that whenever we get that back here, my village there - Kollo, if you want to know -_ still won't have it.
The first thing I think about when I lie down is the people I've met here who have lost loved ones to the storm because I have lost people close to me and I know there is almost no way to get over it. All you can do is heal yourself and move on.
_ Joshua Norman covers Long Beach and is the night reporter.
---
The last few minutes before I finally got to sleep on Sunday night will stay with me forever. Only a few of us stayed in the newsroom that night to take shelter from the storm and keep information coming out of South Mississippi.
Adrenaline fueled by fear finally gave way to exhaustion at around 2 a.m. I got in my sleeping bag and crawled under the desk, not confident that the roof would be there when I awoke. I had been listening to the police scanner, trying to keep abreast of emergency efforts. Sleep came hard. The crackling voices of police tapered off as roads became impassable. I was alone in the silence to survive.
_Mike Keller, covers environment and smart growth.
---
I'm still trying to process everything that happened. Communities destroyed, lives lost. A region changed forever by a force of nature.
It is hard to sleep. Very hard. I bet it us for all of us. You close your eyes and replay the events of the last week. How one thing morphed into another. There's some anger. There's more bewilderment. Why did this have to happen? What's next?
My home was destroyed. Lots of homes were destroyed. It was really weird, having everything I owned for a few days in my '99 Accord. Thankfully, Mike Keller took a bunch of my stuff and put it in his bachelor pad. Call me Mr. RV. I'll be hunkering down there for a while, in that big thing in the parking lot.
Thanks, Knight Ridder, for thinking about us. Now, it's time for the feds to do the same. For everybody.
_Jim Mashek is a sports columnist
---
I just had one of the most difficult experiences of my life.
A call came into the newsroom from a Gulfport resident who had evacuated to Tennessee before the storm. He wanted to know if the Water's Edge apartment complex on U.S. 90 had sustained any damage. A chill immediately crawled up my spine as I realized that this was one of my neighbors - or used to be, I should say. The chill then was replaced by a sinking feeling in my stomach when I told the man that his apartment, and everything in it, had been obliterated by Katrina's 25-foot storm surge. The remains of his building, and quite possibly all his belongings, were strewn throughout what was once the parking lot. The conversation was emotional, to say the least.
As a Southern California native, I once joked with people in the newsroom that I would take an earthquake over a hurricane any day. After witnessing and experiencing the devastation wrought by Katrina, the statement now holds very little humor, if any at all.
_Brandon M. Bickerstaff covers sports.
---
I'm one of those people who still goes to bed worried after Hurricane Katrina, wondering whether my sister Annemarie, a nurse at Oschner's Hospital, survived the deluge in New Orleans.
I pray I will have good news during the next week.
My house on Fournier Avenue in Gulfport was still there when I last saw it, but the amount of work to get it functional seems huge. When I think of the devastation to the whole Coast, and to our culture, it's enough to make me cry.
But there are blessings, and that's what keeps me going. Fortunately, I stayed with features editor Scott Hawkins and rode out the storm in relative safety. And thank goodness, I took my cats Goldfinger and Snickers with me, or they might have drowned in my house when the water started rising. To see those little guys playing with their toys now is a real comfort.
Still, I get overwhelmed when I think of the work to be done, by me and everyone else. If you focus on the big picture, you could get too depressed. It's just better to do everything you can on each day, and when that happens, maybe the big picture won't look so bad.
_Doug Barber is the interim sports editor.
---
Tears started to flow Sunday morning when I saw Maria Watson standing in front of the shell of St. Peter's by-the-Sea, the Episcopal church where I am a member. She and her husband, Julius Ward, had help me board up a big picture window on my house on Aug. 28. They told me they were riding out the storm at their beautiful old home on a small street between U.S. 90 and Second Street. I was concerned, but Maria said they would be fine.
After the storm, I couldn't imagine that anything could be fine for their street. I even felt a surge of guilt; what if one of the last things they did was an act of kindness on my behalf?
But there they were, ready to worship with other members who arrived around 8 a.m. in our new version of Sunday best: T-shirts, shorts and a strong sense of family connection.
Because we really are a family. The definition of family has become very fluid on the Mississippi Gulf Coast over the past week. Friends who banded together during the storm. Neighbors who offer help and humor to each other. Co-workers who lend shoulders and mingle tears - and open their homes to others. And church members who feel drawn to be with each other because it is Sunday morning.
These family reunions are as valuable to the recovery as any tarps, plywood and running water.
_Tammy M. Smith is a copy editor
---
The water came from the south, then from the west. It came at will, with no hope of stopping the storm surge as homes rolled into the Tchoutacabouffa River like dominos being tossed onto a parking lot during my childhood days.
When was Hurricane Katrina going to back off? How did she get this big?
How many people - friends and family - were going to lose their lives?
This wasn't supposed to happen to Biloxi, a beachfront community as pretty as anyplace in the world.
It did. It was sad.
Shortly after the storm surge made landfall around 11 a.m. on the upper end of Tchoutacabouffa River, it was evident that lives would be lost.
When daybreak came Tuesday, bodies (no actual count) were floating the bay waters of Biloxi. Where did they come from?
Some were from the old Biloxi Point, some from the upper Tchoutacabouffa.
Can anyone imagine sitting in a home - one that houses every cherished item you own - when the sound of a freight train approaches from the south. Was it a tornado or a surge? To say the least, it was the latter.
Water ripped through houses, lifting them at will. The homes will never rest in the same foundations.
Is there any reason to believe we can rebuild?
I can, but a dear friend of mine will not have that chance. He was swept off the top of his house, leaving behind a family of two. When the body was discovered, it didn't look like the same.
Somehow, some way, we must get through this deadly nightmare.
Personally, I've had my share of devastations, but I will be back. Bank on it.
_Al Jones covers outdoors and Southern Miss sports
---
After riding out the storm with half of my family at a friend's house, I made my way into work and hit the ground, ready to help tell South Mississippi's story of Hurricane Katrina and the aftermath.
Most of us had been in constant touch, either directly or through relays from other friends. But my nephew, John Sheets, had lost contact and we couldn't get through via cellphone, text message or land line.
About 5 p.m. that day, my phone beeped with a text message. John was safe.
I sobbed a couple of sobs of relief that my entire family had made it through the storm safely. That's what I think about when everything else starts to overwhelm me. My family is safe.
Everything else is negotiable.
_Kate Magandy is the city editor.
---
I've flown in a helicopter from state line to state line, and those images will haunt me for the rest of my life.
I thought I was prepared. I was not. I broke down for a while when we hit the ground the first trip. My mind couldn't process the loss of life, the destruction.
There are no words.
_Geoff Pender is the political editor
---
I moved away five years ago, but the Coast will always be a special place to me because it's where my children were young.
Both boys grew from infancy to adolescence here, and my most precious memories of them are set in in Ocean Springs and Biloxi, where we lived.
Hurricane Katrina took away some of their childhood. Front Beach Drive, where they spent many days throwing a cast net and fishing off the public pier, is gone, as is the familiar sight of the Biloxi skyline.
This is nothing next to the loss that other people have suffered, but I can't help feeling a little sad for my boys.
_Dan Duffey is a former city editor. He is now a bureau chief with the Charlotte (N.C) Observer.
---
My dad came to tell me that he'd gotten close to my house Tuesday, that it didn't look good. He gave me a camera with some pictures, but after one attempt to get them pulled off the disc, I just left it on the growing rubble pile on my desk.
It's strange, because it's all really just stuff to me: the TV, TiVo, stereo, CDs, computers,
The only things I'll really miss are the period civil rights movement books I'd collected, stuff that's out of print and can't be replaced.
Sunday, I got down probably to where my dad saw the place. There's a sea of rubble up 42nd Avenue in Gulfport a half-block north of my house, big rolls of paper, container trucks, pallets of plywood.
I looked down to climb up on something (which was probably the roof to my carport) to get a better look down the street and found two of my "things": an old shoe and a waterlogged and sun-dried Drive By Truckers CD case, sans music.
Those "things" I'll keep. I haven't lost every "thing."
_Don Hammack is a sports writer who has been running the Sun Herald's blog during the storm.
---
I keep losing stuff and worry about something happening to the quilts made my mama and my grandmas. They were folded on top of a wardrobe so they didn't get wet in the tidal surge.
The other day I left the windows on the truck open. A few drops of rainwater got on them and for a few minutes I thought the world was coming to an end. That's just crazy thinking.
I have to concentrate real hard to keep my stuff together. Staying busy helps. On Sunday, I popped a CD into the truck stereo because I couldn't bear hurricane news any more. Diana Krall's singing was like liquid valium.
_Tom Wilemon covers casinos and business.
---
God and I had a personal conversation on the 5:30 p.m. Tuesday flight from St. Paul, Minn., to the Mississippi Gulf Coast. I thanked him for saving the lives of my family who make their homes here and in New Orleans.
Five minutes after my arrival at the Sun Herald newsroom, I witnessed an employee getting the sorrowful news that a family member had been lost to the hurricane. I briefly closed my eyes and asked God to allow me the luxury of hanging on to my own grief and shock and sadness for a little while longer.
I've held onto it through an hour-long tour of the destruction in Ocean Springs and Biloxi, the towns where I spent my childhood. I held onto it during a brief reunion with my family still here on Coast. I'll hold onto it until I return to St. Paul and then I'll let it flow.
_Cathy Straight is a managing editor at the Pioneer Press in St. Paul, Minn. She is native of Ocean Springs.