Week Two, Day Five

Thursday ...
We decide to have breakfast at a Waffle House today. There are maybe 40 Waffle Houses in Gulfport and Biloxi. They're the equivalent (in number of locations) to Starbucks in San Francisco or Chicago. In fact, as I'm driving the team back to camp, there was a Waffle House on both sides of the Interstate-- it was pretty ridiculous.

We left for breakfast at 6:20am and, while the sun wasn't up yet, it was already in the mid-70s and VERY foggy.

It's gonna be a good day for outdoor work, so Emily and Kevin have a couple of hours work moving and delivering doors and windows to waiting homes while Bruce, JJ, and I finish painting the trim in the Pearson home before we move to the Bullock home and start all over again.

During the course of the day, we will work through blazing heat , tornado warnings, dark clouds, really hard rain, fog, and blue skies.

Oh yeah... you saw it right... “tornado warnings". Four of the five of us are Californians so of course we know EXACTLY what to do for this... stand by the window and talk about how dark the sky is and notice that the wind is picking up. At least we know enough to stay indoors. Clearly we're distracted so we take a break when the warning is lifted and head to the volunteer base. While we're away from the job, *this* would be the time that Jim drops by to take a picture of the team at work. (Ya' just gotta love irony.)

Jim catches up with us at the base and we get a pretty good question and answer session going. Jim and his crew originally aimed to have between 20 and 25 families back in their homes by this Thanksgiving. He now figures that the total by November 23rd will be 23. We also find out that he's just lined up eight new projects, which means that eight families got word today that their homes will be fixed. Eight more families just breathed a sigh of relief.

After our day is over, I drive the team around East Biloxi to the areas they haven't seen -- the dry dock that is now a mass of mangled steel

(it looks a lot like Godzilla practiced field goal kicks into the building) ,

the roof with no house , the vacant lots on street after street ... whole neighborhoods gone ... with posted signs that list the address of the structure that *used* to be there.

My goal in doing this isn't to bum anyone out-- we've accomplished a lot this week. I just wanted to show them how powerful this force of nature was. They've seen the human side of the storm all week but it's important to remember that this wasn't JUST high water ... it was wind powerful enough to take the seemingly unbreakable and bend it beyond all recognition. It removed whole blocks of structures. It took hospitals, schools, libraries, child care centers, local business, gas stations, churches, car lots, graveyards ... all of it.

We're rebuilding homes and that's a good and noble thing but only time will rebuild this community.