(TNS) A for sale sign went up Monday in front of Linda Boyd's recently renovated three-bedroom 1930s bungalow, despite a tree limb that had punched a hole in its new blue tin roof and a porch torn askew.
"My momma's 86 years old, she has Alzheimer's and I cannot have her living in harm's way anymore," said Boyd, who also put her mother's house two blocks away up for sale and cemented plans to relocate to Orlando, Fla. Boyd has lived here since 1969, when Hurricane Camille hit, and she has survived several smaller hurricanes. Katrina convinced her to go for good this time. "There's just no telling what's coming up this Gulf Coast anymore," said Boyd, who had run a check-cashing business. She intended to reduce her asking price of $93,500 for the 1,100-square-foot 31st Avenue house due to the storm damage.
Two blocks away, across the railroad tracks, virtually every house, business, casino, hotel, church and commercial structure within four blocks of the shoreline was reduced to rubble by Katrina's fury.
Many of the homeowners reportedly did not have flood and storm coverage because it was prohibitively expensive.
It was like they put Gulfport inside a washing machine, as one local resident put it.
Winds reaching 150 mph and more whipped up a storm surge of water that officials estimated at 30 to 40 feet high. That ferocious wall of wind-driven seawater slammed into the shoreline and simply obliterated the built landscape along the handful of blocks that dared to hug the shore of what are normally idyllic, white-sand beaches.
"This whole area is just gone. It's a real shame, isn't it? So many lives destroyed," said David Atkins, a firefighter with the DeKalb County, Ga., Fire Department urban search and rescue K-9 unit just outside Atlanta. Atkins and his black Labrador retriever, Bo, have been going out each day for the past week to search for bodies in the tall jumble of debris that was shoved several blocks back from the beach and piled into a 30-foot high berm of rubble that stretches mile after mile along the 80-mile length of storm-ravaged shoreline.
With the help of Bo and Gunner, a German shepherd, Atkins and the 22 members of his DeKalb County unit, had recovered several bodies here.
As of Monday, there were 85 confirmed deaths from the hurricane in Harrison County, population 185,000, which includes Gulfport.
For the surrounding six counties, the death toll stood at 162. Col. Joe Spraggins, director of Harrison County Emergency Operations Center, saw hopeful signs with how his community was coping with the crisis and moving from shock and grief to resolve and a can-do attitude.
"I would never have predicted we'd be this far along in the recovery at the two-week stage," Spraggins said. "We went from no infrastructure after the eye of the hurricane passed over to 80 percent operational in terms of water, sewer and power. Businesses and restaurants are re-opening. Wal-Mart's open. It's pretty amazing."
Even the harsh assessment of a slow response and the adequacy of President Bush and FEMA officials' handling of the initial crisis in Gulfport had softened considerably by Monday, when the President made his third visit to the storm-ravaged Gulf Coast.
"I think President Bush is doing everything in his power to assist us at this point,' Spraggins said. "But he's got crises to handle all over the world. He's got a busy schedule and he's come here three times so far. We think that's pretty good. What's really sustained us so far is seeing how much Americans from all across the country have bent over backwards to help us."
Along the shoreline, though, the calm and placid waters of the Gulf Coast on Monday belied the destructive force of Katrina.
Tractor-trailers and 40-foot shipping containers that had been parked in a Wal-Mart parking lot were twisted, tossed and slammed into houses several blocks away - strewing their contents of large plastic bags packed with undamaged packages of Fruit of the Loom T-shirts, underwear and children's socks across acres of debris.
"You Loot. We Shoot," read a plywood sign with black spray-painted letters in front of a house that was little more than a cement slab and a mound of rubble. "Help Us Rebuild," said another sign a block away in front of a house that had been obliterated.
Household items that were not crushed into indistinguishable, fist-sized chunks appeared in random and strangely juxtaposed sequences: Uprooted trees whose branches became a macabre sculpture hung with a woman's bra, a man's necktie, a Barbie doll, bedsheets, green and purple plastic Mardis Gras beads and tendrils of shredded plastic in hues of yellow, blue and white.
"We've seen a lot of destruction in our work, but nothing like this. Ever," said firefighter James Adams, who conducted cadaver searches with his German shepherd, Gunner.
"Bo just got a hit over there,' said Atkins, who also noticed swarming black flies, usually a telltale sign of a decomposed body.
Gunner appeared to mark the same spot. The other firefighters were called in with axes, pike poles and chain saws.
They pulled, cut and hacked at the 15-foot debris pile, before the search was called off. "False positive," they called it. Probably a rotting chicken carcass or some other animal meat.
After the firefighters' tools fell silent, the neighborhood was ee rily quiet - save for the hissing of cicadas and the occasional twitter of a bird. There was no other human or animal sound. The storm had erased all the music of man and nature.
Up from the shoreline and across the tracks, though, the resilient spirit of this tourist town, which survives on free-spending visitors to its casino resorts and beaches, was etched on the faces of many.
"I was blessed and I'm staying," said 89-year-old Audrey Richard, who lives with two dogs and three cats in a single-room, basement apartment that rents for $200 a month. She gets by on small Social Security and disability checks.
She huddled in the back of her dark, linoleum-covered living room and rode out the hurricane.
"So many people lost everything and I've got all that I need,' Richard said.
Across town, at a county office building, Tracy Elwick was filling out paperwork for assistance in having her damaged roof covered with blue tarps.
"We're lucky that our house can be saved, but we're not sure what we'll do for jobs," Elwick said.
She handles public employee benefits for a large insurance company that announced it was shutting down operations and had no plans to re-open.
Her husband, Eldridge, is a self-employed financial planner. The two evacuated ahead of the storm by plane and stayed with friends in Panama City, Panama. Monday was their first time back. They weren't sure they had a future here.
"We may sell our house and move on somewhere else," she said.
"My job is gone and my husband doesn't think people here will have any money to invest in the stock market for a long, long time. But we still consider ourselves very fortunate."
A mile west, along the shoreline in Long Beach, on the campus of the University of Southern Mississippi, the scene was more hopeful.
Although palm trees and majestic oaks had been torn from the ground and the first floor of the yellow stucco, Spanish-styled academic buildings and dormitories were torn apart, the second and third stories were intact - including unbroken windows and stacks of books undisturbed atop students' desks pressed up to the glass with sweeping views of the pristine white sand and gray-green Gulf Coast water just a few steps beyond the dorms.
At the center of campus, a historic marker told the story of "Friendship Oak," a massive, gnarled tree that has stood on that spot for more than 500 years.
Its broad canopy of branches touched the ground in a dozen spots at graceful angles that resembled people kneeling in prayer.
The oak's bark was scarred and torn in places, a few branches were ripped out and a seating platform was splintered, but the Friendship Oak was still alive, bowed but unbroken.
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