An ASA Member's Personal Story About Bringing Relief
to the Mississippi Coast

September 5, 2005

By Kirsten Dellinger, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Mississippi

My mind is racing as I try to pull together the details of yesterday’s trip to the Mississippi coast. I’ll try to give you a brief report of the major events of the trip, but impressions and interpretations of what we saw on the journey from Oxford through Hattiesburg to Bay St Louis, MS  will have to wait for another time.  On Saturday, Sept. 3rd after responding to a call by  Scott Kreeger suggesting that we take a trip to the coast to pick up those needing to evacuate, we secured over 100 gallons of gas (thanks to all of our Oxford friends and colleagues), supplies, including bottled water, canned goods, toothbrushes, diapers, etc. (thanks to all of you), and  20 donated sandwich meals from McCallister’s.  With numerous phone calls to official agencies (Red Cross, MEMA, etc.), university officials, and many others we were able to sketch out a solid plan by midnight.  At 7am Sunday,  Robbie Ethridge, Denton Marcotte, Jeff Jackson, Scott Kreeger, and I convened to load the supplies into three vans and one truck. We were able to leave Oxford at 8:20 am. The University of Mississippi Archaeology van, driven by Robbie Ethridge and Kirsten Dellinger took the lead. We were followed by the fuel supply truck driven by Jeff Jackson. Denton Marcotte took up the third position and Scott Kreeger held up the rear. The caravan kept in contact through cell phone (in Northern MS when we could get a connection) and by walkie talkies in the lead and rear cars (“Roger that” turned out to be Robbie’s favorite phrase). Our Oxford support team was led by David and Rita Swanson. Laurie Cozad and Cliff Ochs were also in the wings for back up support.

 Just so you have a sense of the route: We drove from Oxford via Batesville to Jackson on 55 and then took 49 to Hattiesburg. From Hattiesburg, we took 59 south to state Hwy 53/ 603 past I10 all the way to 90.  Our first stop was in Canton, MS, just North of Jackson. We had heard that fuel was available there and had planned to top off our tanks if possible. Every caravan on the road had the same plan and we soon found (as expected) that most gas stations were out of gas or there were 2 hour waits. This was not a problem for us as we had plenty of fuel for the trip.  I think the first caravan we passed was near Grenada, MS. It was a line of about 30 (or more) Illinois police patrol cars and a boat. Later we passed a long caravan of military police/ national guard. There were other smaller caravans like us with homemade “Red Cross volunteer” signs taped to the side of the car or “Katrina Aid Relief Supplies” handwritten across the back of small trailers. There were semi-trailers full of supplies, many utility trucks, three buses from Ohio, etc. Most of these caravans seemed to be headed to New Orleans.  Just outside of Bay St. Louis, we were passed by an impressive series of mobile hospital units from North Carolina. 

 The destruction from Hattiesburg down to the coast was mind-numbing. On 59 there were trees down or snapped in half, guard rails crushed, highway signs twisted and toppled, and a few abandoned cars on the side of the road.  We drove by a few people who stood on overpasses waving (one holding an American flag) and thanking the oncoming traffic for the help they hoped we were bringing. Just off of 59 on 53, we refilled our gas tanks on the side of the road and got information from two local men in an MDOT truck that 53/603 were now clear to the coast. These back roads gave us a glimpse of the destruction in rural, small town MS that is not likely to be covered by the national media. Houses and trailer homes were windowless, roofless, crushed by trees. All power lines were down. There were poles leaning precariously close to the road and loose wires lyying across the road. Homemade spray painted signs outside of homes like, “Stop-Farm Bureau Help Us Please, FEMA MEMA welcome” and “Thank Y’all for your help” were stark reminders of the needs in this area. We passed a small distribution center north of Kiln, MS where cars lined up down the highway waiting for aid. A church sign read, “No Church Today.”  As we passed I10, we saw mud in the road, cars strew about in the median and on the side of the highway, cars and boats piled up on top of one another.  For brevity’s sake, I can’t give the full description here. Suffice it to say, that all five of us said that we felt like we were on another planet. Disorder and destruction at this magnitude are completely disorienting.

 Our first stop in Bay St. Louis was at the intersection of 90 and 603. We pulled off to re-group and to plan our attempt to find a place to distribute the supplies and to get information on the location of the shelters. Robbie and Denton walked over to a Rite Aid parking lot that was set up with a line of official-looking tents. Although we had all initially thought that the tents might be for shelter, it was sobering to find out that this was the place to bring the dead. A plywood sign just outside the area read: DECON (we’re assuming this means decontamination area?).  The guy that Robbie and Denton talked to suggested that we head across the street to the K-Mart parking lot where he said that people had been camped out for days without supplies (I noticed later that there was a ragged sheet announcing “Camp Katrina” staked at the edge of the parking lot).  We talked to 4 National Guard guys standing near what appeared to be a supply distribution point in the parking lot and asked them if they had directions to the shelter in a nearby school. They reported that while they patrolled the area, they had no maps and did not know where it was. It turns out that a religious group was handing out supplies and that all of the people in the parking lot were well stocked with water, etc. at the moment. We drove by the makeshift shelters at the edge of the parking lot where people had gathered any belongings that they might have and asked if anyone needed any water, food, other supplies, or a ride to Oxford. One man asked if we had any gas as he was trying to get out of town. Others, too, said they didn’t need any supplies or a ride to a shelter in Oxford at the moment. Their home was in Bay St. Louis.

 We successfully found the shelter at Bay St. Louis High School and dropped off all of our supplies there. We unloaded the vans along with others who were delivering water, ice, and supplies. Cases of water were stacked outside the building, while other supplies were handed through a window in a central kitchen or cafeteria area to volunteers (or other shelter residents) who helped stack them in the middle of the room. Donated clothes were piled high in an outside “courtyard” area.  I want to emphasize that this “shelter” had no resemblance to the “neat cots in a row” kind of place that often comes to mind. During and after the storm people had broken into the high school for refuge. Most people had staked out areas on the sidewalks outside under covered walkways. They had thin pieces of blue plastic to sleep on and each family or small group of individuals cobbled together chairs or other bedding to make a living space for themselves on the ground. The school hallways were dark and filled with streaks of mud. The odor was horrendous. Raw sewage, I think.  Eerie reminders of routine high school life such as a bright red “Freshman Frenzy” spirit sign painted on glass windows and colorful plastic notebooks stacked in hallway lockers were interspersed with twisted metal and downed wires. As of Saturday, there were still 600 people staying there. Several church buses arrived and took most of the evacuees to Anniston, AL and West Point, MS. We have a list of names for people looking for loved ones. Robbie also copied down a list of the dead and missing compiled by a woman in the area. According to a Salvation Army volunteer, no outside help (neither National Guard nor Salvation Army or Red Cross) had any major presence until Friday or Saturday (Sept. 2 or 3rd). He explained that the Salvation Army was warned that it was too dangerous to go in. He seemed doubtful of this claim and finally insisted that they go serve meals there. On Sunday they handed out a meal of chicken breast, wheat bread, carrots, and peaches. In addition to delivering supplies, we each fanned out in the shelter and asked people if they wanted a ride to Oxford. Along the way we helped an unsteady older woman back to her sleeping area so that she could eat her meal, found an oxygen tank at an EMT station to aid a man with cancer who’s tank was on low, offered the use of a cell phone to make contact with family member via cell phone (no luck), and just listened to people’s unbelievable stories of tragedy and strength.

 In the end, three people wanted to head North to the Red Cross shelter at First Baptist in Oxford: a single woman, Terri (lived her whole life in Bay St. Louis and wanted to get to family in Grenada, MS) and Wanda and Rob (a 53 year old mother and her 25 year old son) originally from Toka, LA (Chalmette) with an incredible story of escape which included being separated during the storm,  finding each other again beating flood waters and all odds, being transported by barge to the New Orleans causeway on I-10, waiting 20 hours for a bus to the Astrodome, deciding to leave the Astrodome to make their way back to Picayune, MS with a new-found friend and then being dropped off in Bay St. Louis shelter the day before we arrived. After leaving the shelter, we went to a bombed out apartment complex where we had been told there was an older man (“grandpa”) with a serious infection (some said a spider bite). Robbie, Denton, and Jeff found “Mr. Billy” with the aid of a few men still living in their devastated apartments, but he decided to stay.  We left Bay St. Louis at 6:30 pm and on our way home, we stopped at a small shelter in an elementary school in Hancock County in Kiln, MS where a nurse named Juanita seemed to have single-handedly maintained a shelter for older patients with medical needs. When she announced that we were driving to Oxford, we didn’t have any takers. She asked if we would stop by again. Most of these individuals have family members who are also older, with medical conditions that prevent them from coming to pick them up.

 After a long journey home (and a group meal at Wendy’s where we met many, many others who were leaving the coast or who had just come back to see the condition of their homes), we arrived at the Red Cross shelter in Oxford at 2 am to be greeted by 4 volunteers. We were unbelievably relieved to find out this morning that Terri is staying with a local family and plans to settle in Oxford or nearby to be close to her children in Grenada. A volunteer at the shelter did amazing work to find Wanda and Rob’s adopted family in a small town outside of Pittsburgh, PA. They will fly out of Memphis on Tuesday to meet them.  

 It sounds cliché, but it is impossible to capture the scope of this disaster. There’s much more to say about the conditions in Southern MS and on the Gulf coast and many more discussions we need to have about how best to bring aid to the area and to ask the people who have been affected what they need most. For tonight, please know that all of your support has made a huge difference in the lives of at least three people.