If you like, you could drive over I-10 west to the hamlet called Pearlington. Pearlington isn’t incorporated so it gets no particular attention, some people hope it would just go away.
A group of young volunteers asked how could you know if there was any work to do, or what had happened here. Then we turned into the neighborhood where the home we are working on is located.
They saw this house before we reached the street we were to turn onto to get to the house we are working on...
And then another and another ...
Then we turned and saw the houses on both corners...
The whole subdivision is like this, two years and nine months after Katrina.
Oh, by the way, if you lived in one of these four brick homes and did not start rebuilding before June, 2006, you can’t, at least not with any grant money. You probably couldn’t afford the insurance even if you had the money to rebuild.
The only choice is a new home raised up to survive the “100 year flood” elevation. Probably some of those folks never made it back to Pearlington until after June, 2006.
Oh, by the way, the American Red Cross is not taking new grant applications after June 1, I hear. Which agency or organization will be next?
Multiply these four by 10, 20 or 100, brick house or no; then imagine the same in every coastal city and town between Houma, Louisiana and Pascagoula, Mississippi.
On the way back to lunch, I pointed out the window of the truck for one of the volunteers and asked nonchalantly if they saw over in the high grass the brick steps standing solitary and stopping at some non-existent doorway.
Or the set of steps in the lot next door.
Or the concrete pad in the next lot.
Or the FEMA trailer after FEMA trailer still mounted on cement blocks or posts beside the roads.
Has work been done? Yes, thanks to volunteers.
Is there work yet to be done?
Come and see, you won’t believe me until you do.
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