KATRINA LOGA LONG BEACH STORY

Thomas Carroll

We live 0.4 miles from the beach (by street) at 214 Boggs Circle in Long Beach. This photo gives an idea of our proximity.

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A closer view of our home. We were blessed with almost no damage, praise God.

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The debris as it looks from the sky. The heavier stuff is closer to the beach, the lighter stuff is blown everywhere. Some places are thicker than others.

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This is a rough estimate of how far the water came in (blue line). It was assembled using the reports of neighbors who rode the storm out at home and visible signs after the storm. On a side note, the red lines represent the water level from Camille in 1969. The houses on the north side of Magnolia dammed a lot of debris from getting farther in than it did. Our home is roughly 500 yards (.3 mi) north of the beach.

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OUR HOME

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Countless rumors were heard. They ranged from FEMA bulldozing everything south of the tracks to allowing the residents to live there if there were enough people to occupy the area. My intentions at first were to occupy and begin cleaning up.

On the Tuesday after the storm the first time that I went back I begged my way through LBPD by showing him my driver’s license and explaining that I just wanted to go look. The policeman there said “Hurry, we’re not to allow anyone in and we are essentially under Marshall Law here. Be careful about approaching any one of us…”

Later that day I was able to obtain a generator and brought it to Long Beach. The way that I got it in was by again begging my way through the Long Beach Police Officer. He wanted to help but his orders were not to allow anyone to cross the tracks. As I was standing there a van drove up and a woman approached him just wanting to go look at her home. He told her that he was no allowed to let her pass, but if she drove back west along the tracks a little way she could walk across and there would be nothing that he could do. I patiently waited for her to leave while listening to this.

I finally played my ace to the officer. I told him about my freezer full of speckled trout and snapper (not too much of an exaggeration there… maybe a little more than half full) that I wanted to save. He said, “I feel your pain. I’ve dropped off a few garbage bags full of deer meat and elk from Colorado at the police station. I tell you what, wait until there’s no traffic and then drive through, but be discreet.I did as he said. and pulled my truck trough into my neighbor’s yard. I then walked over to my fence far behind my neighbor’s house (out of site from Railroad Street), and kicked in the fence enough to be able to get the generator through. I went in, got a wheelbarrow out of my yard, drug it through the remnants of the fence, and hauled the generator through the debris back to my house. This took about an hour. Under the cover of night and noise from neighbors’ generators running north of the tracks, I cranked my generator and was able to save my freezer.

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I slept that night in the house with my dog and a shotgun on the floor under the couch I was sleeping on in the living room. I had the windows still boarded up from the hurricane so it was dark inside with only flashlights to provide a little meager light. The only noise that I could hear above the generator outside was the wailing of the police sirens as they passed up and down railroad street.

The following morning I got up and shut down then secured the generator the best that I could. I was doing a thorough walk-though of the interior of the house when passing by the windows to the side of the front door I saw one of my neighbors walking around outside.

I went out and spoke briefly with her and then went back in and secured the house hoping to get out without being hassled by the police.

To leave I moved the police barricade fence and went back and drove my truck back north across the tracks. After pulling through I walked back to put the portable fence back in place. As I did, a 17-year old kid came up and stood at the crossing and was looking toward the beach.

He then glared at the kid and asked gruffly, “What about you?” The kid replied that he was “just looking…” to which the officer responded that he should get north of Railroad Street and not return.

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After a moment of sizing him up I told him that I appreciated the fact that he wasn’t going to do that and that he would let me go on about my business.

A LB policeman then pulled up in his cruiser and asked me what did I think that I was doing. I explained that I was just leaving, that I lived in the house there (and pointed) and had spent the night to run my generator. He threatened that he could take me to jail just for moving the fence…

After leaving the house Wednesday morning, I drove by to check on my aunt in Gulfport. They were in similar shape: no phone, no power, no water at that point. Later that day the water began arriving at distribution points, but up until then, their only water supply was coming from the melting ice in the the ice chests that we had gotten from one of the ice machines at Stennis.

From Gulfport I drove back to Poplarville. I spent Wednesday afternoon and Thursday there cleaning debris off homes, barns, sheds and out of yards.

Thursday evening I returned back to Long Beach to run the generator and to save the contents of my freezer. When I arrived there were no poice stationed there, but there was a temporary police barricade placed across the railroad crossing.

I waited until dusk and no cars coming along railroad street. I then pulled onto Lang, removed the police barricade fence at the railroad crossing and drove though and parked in my neighbors yard again.

I slept that night in the house with my dog and a shotgun on the floor under the couch I was sleeping on in the living room. I had the windows still boarded up from the hurricane so no light would have come in if any were out there. The only noise that I could hear was coming from the generator on the patio.

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Friday morning I woke up and decided to risk being brave and took a little sight-seeing trip down to the beach on my bike. I stopped and spoke with several people on the ride (why do we always wait until disasters to get to know our neighbors) and took some video with my cam-corder. From the debris line south, there are two houses still standing in Long Beach. This was one of them.

The debris piles as high as 15 feet tall in places and have everything in them from home-construction materials to personal items to nautical pieces (several boats and a few nautical channel markers were in my neighborhood).

Corner of Runnels and Beach Blvd. One of only 2 homes on beach standing in Long Beach

I pass a fireman on the way and we talk for a bit. He told me about a man who had stayed with his parents near the beach for the storm. He said that when the water began to fill up the bottom story, the parents went upstairs while the son went downstairs to pack up a few sentimental items. While he was there, the south wall began waving and sighing with the pounding waves and eventually gave way. The water flowed through the house and took out the north wall as well as him. He was able to twist around and see the house come down as the water washed him inland. The water then deposited him in the street further north, but he was unable to find his parents.

Later that day he was able to get to the fire department and got them to come help him look for them. They find them in the big part that was their home.

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Saturday I drove to Jackson and picked up my wife who had been out of town traveling for work for the previous two weeks and had not been able to get back home. We made our way home Saturday evening. Things were slightly more relaxed at this point. The police were still there at the crossing, but they would allow you to walk in. You couldn’t drive yet (for one thing the street still had too much debris), and they would not allow anyone to park south of the tracks. Fortunately, we had a path through the neighbor’s yard and were able to park on the tracks and travel back and forth across to our house that way.

I’ve seen movies, seen pictures, and played video games where destruction and total devastation were the norm. This, in no way, resembles reality. It’s one thing to see people in bombed out homes in Germany during WWII in a movie. It’s another to see your neighborhood looking like that. We are working towards pulling our lives back together and helping and being helped by friends along the way.