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A benefactor and HandsOnUSA purchased 150 bicycles for use by residents of East Biloxi. Many people there lost their cars and have no transport, but it's flat enough to make cycling easy. Volunteers unloaded a truckload of new Huffy bikes in boxes. Serena stands atop the bike pile.
Volunteers spent days assembling the bikes and added a lock to each one. Alabama Mike shows off the result.
The bikes were delivered to the East Biloxi disaster coordination center for distribution. We've been seeing a lot of blue Huffy's around town. One rider showed up in the line of cars at the Salvation Army distribution center at Yankie Stadium. He placed a 50 pound box of food, 20 pound box of bottled water, a box of cleaning supplies, and two rolls of paper towels atop the handlebars and rode away without toppling. Unfortunately, I was without camera at the time.
Around Town
Since there are so many residents displaced, the U.S. Post Office set up hundreds of outside postboxes underneath the expressway ramp so people can pick up their mail. There's a post office van there at certain times of day for people who need services. Some postmen who do deliver to homes now wear masks.
Bell South phone company has set up tents in a number of locations with free phones for use by residents whose phones were wiped out.
Here are some of the thousands of porta-potties stored near the convention center. Reportedly, they belong to FEMA.
There's a Mardi Gras museum in the old section of town. (Mardi Gras is a tradition in Biloxi.) It's located in an old hotel not far from the coast and appears to be boarded up for the moment.
In downtown Biloxi is the old Barq's rootbeer bottling plant, circa 1936, now turned into a boutique mall for casino tourists. Dr. Bob and the street team met Mrs. Barq one day while prowling the neighborhood. She told them how they had sheltered about 30 people on the second floor during the storm. The product began in a small Biloxi building in 1898 and it was acquired by Coca Cola in 1995.
Here's some of the hurricane damage near the tip of the peninsula. It was pretty total there.
The Back Bay behind the city turns into a small river. Here are some fishing boats that got tossed up on shore.
A Salvation Army volunteer poses here in front of some of the "ghost woods". The name derives from the spooky appearance at night with all the plastic bags in the trees. I don't know where so many plastic bags came from, but they're everywhere.
Here's what happens to the rubble piled on the street sides. It gets snatched up by big machines and deposited in large trucks. Where does it go after that? --- I don't know. If you find out, please tell me. Here a bucket loader attacks some refrigerators and a derelict car.
HandsOn Activities
We still have a few trees left to clear. Here an intrepid volunteer clears branches with a pole saw.
Amy relaxes in front of the resulting brush pile streetside.
Normally, the Southern Baptist relief workers (yellow shirts) have been doing the cooking and serving of meals for the Salvation Army. When a new group of Baptists showed up, HandsOn volunteers were asked to help break them in. Getting up at 3:00am to prepare and then serve the meals was a big job.
At 3:00am not a creature was stirring. Except Rob, that is-- he did a great job stirring the beef stew in the kitchen van. Rob got in trouble though when he exclaimed at some point, "What the hell is going on?" He immediately got smacked in the back of the head by a Southern Baptist lady who was standing behind him. How's that for "Hands On?" She informed him he'd better get on his knees immediately and beg the Lord Jesus' forgiveness. (Magnanimously, Rob doesn't plan to press charges.)
The Salvation Army distributes food and supplies during the week behind Yankie Stadium. They line up a big bunch of pallets and people line up in their cars and drive through a line where volunteers load their cars with the supplies. HandsOn volunteers have ben in the forefront of this activity.
Distribution duty is a nice chance to talk with some of the locals. We occasionally recognize womeone whose house we may have worked on or whose neigborhood we've worked in. One day we even encountered the clerk from the well-patronized liquor store near our base camp.
Cooking and cleanup duty at the base camp are daily chores. Here are Justine cleaning out a cooler and Veenita preparing the evening meal.
Ottawa Pete scoops up a portion after a hard day demolishing interiors.
Our animal resue efforts extend not only to dogs and cats. Nurse Trisha cuddles a baby squirrel that was found on a job site. Thanks to the web, we quickly located a licensed wildlife rehabilitator in Biloxi and got the squirrel the help he(she?) needed.
At night, volunteers sort donated blankets and warm clothing for delivery the next day to residents in East Biloxi who are living with their families in tents and trailers. It suddenly got unseasonably cold in late October-- down to 49 degrees at night. Our mold-remediation crew return from work in their Tyvek space suits. They have to scrub all the wood in the houses and spray with special chemicals several times and finally spray on a plastic sealant in order to prevent the notorious black mold from returning.
The free clinic at Yankie Stadium was ordered shut down by the state. We think they don't want competition for local medical facilities. I loaded the Subaru up with left-over medical supplies and moved them to a doctor's office where they could be put to use.
While scouting some jobs, Richard discovered a huge US flag in the rubble near the beach. It sat there for weeks, so he finally rescued the flag and I helped him fold it.
The Homecoming Dance
A high school in Pittsburg adopted D'Iberville high school, which is right next to Biloxi. The high school in D'Iberville was spared the storm surge but had some wind damage. One teacher was killed and most of the others have been living in tents or FEMA trailers as have most of the students. The annual homecoming dance is a priority but the students had lost most of their clothes, so the Pittsburg kids donated their prom gowns and sent them down. Miss Debbie, seen below in front of D'Iberville HS, came down to stay with HandsOn and spent a week at the school helping do alterations on the gowns.
I got a job for Jo-Ann and myself as chaperones and permission to attend wearing our HandsOn t-shirts (since that's all we had). Our operations director Darius dressed up and accompanied Miss Debbie. One of the students Debbie helped hadn't a date, so we fixed her up with one of the younger HandsOn volunteers, Benjamin. (He is actually 30, but no one had to know that.) Videographer Bill Driscoll Jr. (no relation) came along to film the proceedings.
Someone provided a white stretch limo to transport our party over to D'Iberville, so Jo-Ann got to ride in style on her first day.
Here's the gang of HandsOn volunteers who crowded outside to gape at the white limo that suddenly appeared. Benjamin and high-school student Sabra got their prom photo taken. Sabra was pleased to get her first limo ride ever.
On the way to the dance, we stopped at a supermarket so Benjamin could run inside and get some flowers. The limo stopped in front of the store and this dressed-up dude goes inside followed by a cameraman taking video. That sure made a few people stop and look! On the way out the door, some local got up the nerve to ask Benjamin who he was. "I'm the drummer for the famous rock group, the Bloody Porpoises", he replied.
One of the teachers told us how, during the storm the flood waters stopped fifty yards short of the school. A couple employees were at the school and had got word that a number of policemen were trapped in the police station a mile away and couldn't hold out much longer. So they got a school bus and plowed along 3/4 of the way before they were stopped by the rising water. The policemen and some K9 dogs just managed to swim from the station to the bus and were rescued.
We haven't been to a youth dance since Lyndon Johnson was president, so were were surprised at the level of security. Students were not allowed to leave the building. There were teachers and parents there to keep an eye out. A K9 police unit passed through the dance floor and there were at least half a dozen sherriff offiers who actually circulated on the dance floor. One of them stood on the stage staring down at the dance floor. We never did ask about this.
Since we wore HandsOn shirts, we had a great number of parents and staff approach us during the evening and thank us all for being in Mississippi to help.
Jo-Ann and I spent a day together at the food distribution operation at the stadium. Some of our work crews came by on their lunch break to take over for us so we could eat. Here is Jo-Ann eating a hurried lunch.
On another day, we worked with the crews and went to Yankie Stadium for lunch. It was quite warm and sunny, so we were able to relax on the ballfield.
Jeanette, the famous Cookie Lady, shipped us some homemade cookies which we shared with the volunteers.
