Just Like TV ...sort of

Driving from New Orleans to Gulfport today, I couldn't help but think that when I watch news reports on TV about tragedies in far away places, its easy to blur the line between fact and fiction. In other words: somehow, when I saw the reports about Katrina on TV, I tucked what I saw I saw in my brain's sitcom/drama/fiction file, rather than my reality/non-fiction file. The devastation I saw on TV and heard about in the news and read about on the Internet seemed too immense and awful and mind-boggling to be real. But today, I (and the rest of the team) received a powerful reminder that for thousands, even millions, of people, the reports reflected reality all too well. Because what we saw outside the windows of our vans was just like TV.

Only it was real.

We saw: Houses tagged with spray paint--the secret code of rescue teams that came in after the storm looking for survivors. "Neighborhoods" with nothing left but a few front steps. FEMA trailers. Trees bent, stripped, and shattered. More FEMA trailers. A semi trailer that apparently landed on top of a car during the storm. Empty parking lots (but no buildings to accompany them). Piles of trash in the streets. Crumpled houses.

Here are a few pictures to get a taste (sorry I didn't take more--I guess I was too overwhelmed!)

A FEMA trailer park...

We stopped for a quick bite of ice cream. The shop owner told us that after the storm, the water was above the ceiling at this place.

Other random bits of information I picked up today about Hurricane Katrina that I think are true (but can't be certain):

• There are 92,000 FEMA trailers in Mississippi alone. These are residential trailers and are occupied primarily by families. That's a lot of people living in trailers!
• In order to clean up New Orleans, an average of one 40 ft. dumpster's worth of garbage needs to be removed for each resident.
• The population of New Orleans has decreased by 250,000 since Katrina.
• Garbage trucks in Gulfport still run every day in order to remove Katrina junk.