Katrina's Impact on Waveland: September 2005

947 Pics

Finally Home

Well the journey is over.... It was an incredible experience I can't even begin to explain what it was like down there... Sometime tomorrow I will upload all my pics and put a link to them so you can see them all.... thanks for checking on my page and praying for me.. It means a lot to me.. Take care everyone.. and God bless.

Headed Home

We are headed to Pensacola, Florida.

The "New" Hospital

This is one of our shelters being used as the Waveland hospital.

Voluntary Evacuation

The current alert is for voluntary evacuation and that is supposed to be upgraded to manditory. We're spikin 32 of our shelters to keep them from being blown away and ruined.

Wind Gusts

We just had a strong wind and rain surge as we were working about a mile from the beach. The situation is getting pretty bad over here.

78 mph

Wind gusts to 78 mph are forecast in the next hour.

Winds

Winds have picked up greatly today. Not sure where we are gonna fly because Dallas is full from the evacuation but ill keep y'all updated

Hard Day

I just worked the hardest day I have ever worked in my life. It's hard for me just to type this out.

Rita is now a category 5 so we're hunkerin down and it may force us to leave early. Our flight out on Friday is through Dallas...YIKES

Whew!

The team after work

The Mayor

The mayor of Waveland came to visit today.

Heavy Lifting

Curt and I singlehandedly unloaded everything you see in this picture by hand. These units are 400 lbs a piece.

13 hours of labor today in all-time record high temperatures for Waveland which is helping to cause Rita the largest Hurricane on record. What a time to be apart of history.

More Lifting

We loaded and unloaded this pile of carpet.

The Waveland Schools

Info from North Bay/Waveland Schools from the Bay-Waveland superintendent, when asked what could we do she said something for her teachers, some have lost everything including all their teaching "stuff". Physical addresses are not in place just yet. West Elementary had damage, but will reopen by October 3rd...the principal there (Scott Powell) stated that he and about 20 other teachers are displaced with either no home or a home too damaged to live in. He said he isn't sure about his students, but driving through the neighborhoods near the school, he says many homes are gone or too damaged to live in.

Anticipated Return

Friday 9/23/05

American Flight # 2033

LEAVE DALLAS: 6:48 PM

ARRIVE SEATTLE: 8:57 PM

The Temperature

107 :(

The "Old" City Hall

This is the art work you may have seen on the Oprah Show at the "old" city hall.

More of the Same

Lunch Yum

Our everyday lunch

Break Time

Jedi warriors on break playing with light sabers we found in the rubble.

1969

This sign is still up in Waveland

Common Sight

The Streets

The streets of Waveland.

Another Team Member Goes Home

We just lost a guy because his ex-girlfriend was talking to her ex-boyfriend so he left. Sooo dumb

Prayer Works

Well the prayers have been working for the heat. We could tell when yall were prayin for us cause we had a lot of cloud breaks today.

Lunchtime

Here's our crew eating lunch in the car.

Blury Pics

Aight i fixed the size of the pix now sorry about that I had some troubles with my phone. Should work now.

Big Wigs Visit

The big guy is the brother of the governor of Mississippi.

Water Tower

Waveland water tower hope you can read it lol

My New Friends

Jerry, Lisa and TC before work this morning.

Our New Site

Hers's our new work site. It's gonna be 100 with 95 percent hummidity today which equals 135 degrees. Woot!

New Orleans 111 miles

Blown Up House

The side of this house was completely blown off.. It's located next to our worksite and about a mile from the beach.

2 Tired Followers of Christ

Curt and I are spent and we have much more work to do.

Cold Shivers in 100+ Degree Heat

We're about done with these shelters.

A few from our team including myself are getting cold shivers due to the extreme heat.

Please Pray

We need prayers very badly over here, Bret's son attempted suicide and we don't know his condition. Bret is leaving today.

The "New" City Hall

This building is almost complete. It's now lunch time woot! We're making a city hall.

Another Structure

We are starting two new structures for the city today.

Demolition

Making room for the structures :)

Southern Accent = Cute Girl

Curt and I realized that if a cute girl has a southern accent she's hot. The daughter of the farmer were stayin with is hot and she has an accent.

Sunday: A Day of Rest

Chillin on our day off at Dairy Queen in Hattiesburg, Mississippi.

Please Pray

We just got notified that Hurricane Rita is on track to hit us in 5 days please pray that it dies before it gets here.

Country Meal

We finally took a day off. Here's a picture of the country meal I had today at the Cracker Barrel Cookery in GulfPort, Mississippi. I ordered the Cracker Barrel Sampler which included Corn bread, sugar cured ham, mashed potatoes and gravy, chicken and dumplins, meatloaf and Mac and Chesse. Freakin good!

Boats Everywhere

This is about a half mile from the beach. There are boats everywhere.

Post from Phone Conversation

Cell phone reception in our new location just outside of Wiggins, Mississippi deep in the heart of the back woods of Central Mississippi is very poor. So this post is based on a phone conversation:

Craig & Curt & team are doing well. They are both healthy but tired.

They ask you to pray for strength and endurance. Craig would like pray for his knee that has never fully recovered from reconstructive surgery.

The days are long & hot and the work is hard. They work at least 12 hours each day and currently have a one hour drive to and from their hunting lodge where they sleep each night. They are working in extreme conditions with the heat outside of the shelters yesterday above 100, inside the shelters, where they installed carpet and doors yesterday, it was much hotter.

Yesterday another dead body was found near their worksite. The smell of sewage, carnage, and wreckage permeates the air all day long and complete destruction is commonplace. Lawnmowers, computers, vcrs, clothes, refrigerators, everything, all possessions, even the most prized are stewn everywhere. The trees that are still standing are full of belongings. They daily meet locals and hear their stories of complete loss of everything but life. They hear of lotters each day but incidents are declining.

Craig says, "I am numb to the destruction now, it is undescribable. Seeing it in person is much worse than anything I saw on tv. They say it will take 2 years to get this town of Waveland back on its feet. Tell everyone I love them and miss them."

Complete Destruction

New Address

75 Golden Pines Road
Perkinston, Mississippi 39573

Woolmarket, Mississippi

We haved moved to the deep country of Mississippi. We're staying in a huge hunting lodge. Now we're only 50 minutes away from our work site. The city we are staying in is called Woolmarket. I'll let you know more info later.

We are Moving

Well we are changing houses. We had to drive 8 hours total each day and we were spending too much time driving so were moving closer, just 40 miles from Waveland, Mississippi.