Guest Commentary
Waveland, Mississippi
Mack Hall

There are no blue FEMA tarps in Waveland, Mississippi because there is nothing to shelter. One does not unfold FEMA tarps on knee-high waves of ruins and wreckage.

Enjoying a spring outing in Louisiana, a friend and I on a whim drove over to Mississippi just to say we had been there. After looking at maps and brochures at the visitors' center we thought we would motor down to Waveland and enjoy a cup of coffee on the coast.

We found the coast, all right, and we found the geographical expression that used to be Waveland. We found no coffee.

We found silence. We found street after street of archaeology: foundation slabs, concrete piers holding up nothing but sky, the decaying exoskeletons of cars, blasted hopes.

This is where Katrina hit. Here. Right here.

Occasionally one sees a human, an adult, sweeping or shoveling the past off a level of concrete, but no children, no animals, no sounds except the Gulf waves. The few street signs are typically hand-lettered on cardboard stapled to the remaining few feet of a utility pole. The beach, a perfect spring-break destination, is empty. The remaining uprights of pleasure piers march out into the water and disappear. Signs caution swimmers who aren't there to stay out of the water because of submerged wreckage.

A block or two behind the beachfront one finds the occasional hurricane-proof house. Yes, the house was hurricane-proof, but not the doors or windows or contents or humans or pets, all blown through and out to their destruction by fifty-foot continents of water on the morning of Katrina. Some fifty people died within minutes, as did uncounted kittens and dachshunds and goldfish.

And beyond that second street back one finds a few more houses, all wrecked, none habitable, some with a plaintive "DO NOT BULLDOZE" spray-painted by folks who hope they can someday come back to find a few things to save: maybe an unbroken cup from the wedding dishes, or a high school graduation picture of a son or daughter who died in Iraq, or a child's favorite toy.

One finds silence in Waveland, Mississippi. One finds no blue FEMA tarps.

Naturally we will all now want to send more money to New Orleans.

Mack Hall is a resident of Kirbyville