sisyphean
Driving around the ruined remains of Biloxi, with its shattered trees and its nail strewn streets, it was difficult to believe that the hurricane had touched down three months ago. I had seen office buildings with missing fourth walls, like some avant-garde outdoor performance space, with toppled file cabinets and broken typewriters left to rust in the elements, a testament to the slow pace of reconstruction.
A lot of volunteers at HOUSA were short-term folks like me, dropping in for week-long or three day tours, whatever we can spare. But, atimes, I rode with kids who'd been here for months, some from the very opening days of reconstruction. I asked them what's changed in the last month. Some of them look away, scan the scarred terrain and point to a block of debris; of shattered furniture and aluminum siding flattened by a bulldozer.
"That's different," they'd say, "used to be houses over there. We worked on a couple, but I guess the owners decided, in the end, that it wasn't worth it."
A point of contention and minor angst within the volunteer corps was the general sense of flux and vagueness that accompanies reconstruction. Individual residents were making their own decisions about whether to stay or rebuild, but at a higher-level, the town was trying to decide just what reconstruction was supposed to be. Was it pressing rewind and rebuilding everything to how it looked on August 27, 2005? Or was it something else?
There are bids from area casinos, formerly required to build on barges outside city limits, to rebuild on land; and there are accompanying rumours that the city's going to use eminent domain to seize the areas that had been hit the worst and sell it off to Treasure Bay or the operators of the Beau Rivage. They say that there's $20,000 on the table for anyone who wants to sell a boggy, debris-strewn half-acre to a speculator. They say that a lot of people are taking the deal. $20,000 can get you a couple years of rent in Jackson; in an apartment that's warm, working and inland.
We can't tell people what they should or should not do; which deal they should or shouldn't accept. Looking around, and trying to imagine what choice I'd make if I were in their shoes, I can't blame any of them for taking the money. It's a tough fight to pick. We just try to make it a little easier for them.
There are other improvements, if you know how to look. The hurricane stripped off most of the street signs from their posts, and cast them into the gulf, so relief workers would get lost on a regular basis on their first month here, trying to remember if Howard was north or south of Division and if Tuttle was the street they just passed or the one coming up. HOUSA had gone around and put up new signs; quick and dirty affairs of acrylic stickers on sturdy white plastic bought at Home Depot. It's an adhoc thing that most people now suspect will be here long after the last volunteer has left.
The plans for the group are to pack up at the end of January, and there's talk about training up local groups to pick up the slack, but I don't know if that's a realistic goal or not. I asked some of the individual volunteers what their goals were, and if they'd be happy to see certain things by the time they left. One of the long-term guys pointed at a building with a piece of paper on the window marked with a big "R".
"That's a reconstruction permit," they said, "seeing more of those is enough.