2006 Trip to the Gulf Coast
Mississippi & Louisiana
May 25 thru May 30, 2006
Thursday, May 25, at 6:00 AM, our plane took off for New Orleans, Louisiana, or, as they say down in the gulf "N'Orleans". We arrived in Louis Armstrong Airport around 2:00pm N'Orleans time, rented a minivan and headed for the famous "French Quarter", known for it's all night partying on "Bourbon Street".
No, this wasn't a vacation, it was a mission. There were five of us, from the Stoughton/Easton area, who took time off from work and our lives, to travel down to the Gulf Coast Area", to offer our help to people we did not know and did not know us. People who had their lives torn away by a beast of unimaginable proportion, Hurricane Katrina.
In August 2005, a humungous hurricane, some say Category 3, others say Category 5, hit the gulf coast region of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, with such force that it swept away property and lives, showing no mercy. Everything in it's path was ripped apart, torn from the earth and spewed everywhere. Vehicles of all sizes picked up like matchbox cars and thrown into houses, boats found miles inland, buildings lifted from their foundations and parked in the middle of highways.
The pictures on the following webpages depict where we visited and what we saw and WHAT WE DIDN'T SEE! A trip that the five of us will never forget, though it appears that our friends to the south have been forgotten! The physical devestation caused by Hurricane Katrina goes on for hundreds of miles, but the mental devestation affects all of us. This hurricane showed no prejudice. Katrina did not discriminate between rich and poor or white and black. It didn't matter what your faith or belief but I will bet that those who believe in the almighty saw him/her that day!
It's what we didn't see that was most upsetting. It is now 9 months later and so much has been untouched since August! No clean-up, no FEMA, no rebuilding and in many areas, nobody. I could go on for many paragraphs in an attempt to describe this total devestation and our feelings as we drove through Our South, so rich with culture and heritage. But, as was said by someone much smarter than me, "A Picture Tells a Thousand Stories.
So here are the pictures, our pictures of what we saw and didn't see of the once beautiful gulf coast region. Pictures that represent the good and the bad of the N'Orleans and coastal areas of Mississippi. Some will appear to be pleasant, vacation pictures, since we do want to show how much has tried to come back on their own. Others will need little explanation since they show how little has been done to help our brothers and sisters of this once, beautiful area.
We hope that these pictures and the story they tell will cause us all to remember our friends of the gulf coast. We can do more, We can do better, We must do something!