For Katrina's third anniversary, Bay St. Louis plans a celebration: New Day in the Bay, focusing on the rebuilding effort. But another hurricane upends the best laid plans. - by Ellis Anderson  New Day in the Bay, celebrating the town's continuing recovery from Katrina was squashed when Hurricane Gustav arrived. Photo by Ellis Anderson Part 12 in a series of excerpts from the award-winning book that follows Bay St. Louis through the very heart of Hurricane Katrina – and three years of grinding aftermath. The Shoofly Magazine is publishing one excerpt from the book each week through the storm's 20th anniversary on August 29.
Midmorning, Monday, September 1, 2008 The windows of my kitchen had not been boarded over, so I looked towards the back corner of the yard where the thick bamboo grove bowed towards the ground, humbled by the power of the gale. In the adjoining room, my neighbor Gary shouted into his cell phone, straining to be heard over the racket of the storm. When he signed off, he walked into the kitchen, stepping over the towels we’d spread on the floor to sop up puddles. My new roof had already begun to leak.  The first bands of Gustav advancing on Bay St. Louis, photo by Ellis Anderson “I just heard from a friend who’s down by the front,” Gary said. “I’d like to tell you what’s happening, but first you have to promise that you won’t flip out.” Too late! And I already knew exactly what was happening. I was in the middle of a freaking hurricane, despite the vow to myself to never ride out another. I brazenly lied to Gary. “I’ll be fine,” I said. “I want to know what’s going on.” “He says that the water at the front is only five feet from the top of the railroad bridge,” Gary said. The official surge prediction for Gustav was twelve feet, less than half of Katrina’s. But since the storm was just winding up, Gary’s news meant that the estimates for a maximum could be way off, just like they’d been during Katrina. In my mind’s eye, I could see the massive pilings of the railroad bridge rising high above the beach. Imagination painted an impossible wall of water over the bridge footings. A few more mental brushstrokes gave the picture a chilling detail—breaking waves that smashed violently onto the tracks. I peered out toward the street, expecting to see water streaming over the asphalt, just like in Katrina. My stomach squeezed and if I’d eaten breakfast, more than bile would have been forced up into my throat. “The storm isn’t even hitting here,” I whined, as if logic could change reality. “It’s coming in a hundred miles to the west.” “We’re in the northeast quadrant,” Gary explained, “so we’re actually getting the brunt of it. On the radio they said that high tide this afternoon could push in even more surge.” Watching my face pale, he added a chipper tagline. “But they think we’re seeing the worst now.” He punched me lightly on the shoulder for encouragement. “Come on, let’s go play some gin rummy, I’m tired of solitaire.” Gary’s dog, Booger, led the way to the guest side of my house. The small white ball of fluff was the carpenter’s inseparable sidekick, and the two lived nearby in a travel trailer. The evening before, when I realized I wouldn’t be able to evacuate in time, Gary had offered to be my storm companion. I was relieved at their presence. Hurricanes are like scuba diving—the buddy system considerably ups the odds of survival. Gary had moved into the guest apartment and set up a command station in that kitchen with a battery radio and a deck of cards. He’d taken the precaution of stashing his pack of cherished belongings in the bathroom of the building’s center hallway, the most protected part of the house.  While making my own storm preparations the night before, I’d remembered the story of a friend who’d hidden her grandmother’s punch bowl set in the dishwasher before she’d evacuated for Katrina. The house had been utterly destroyed, but cleanup crews later found the dishwasher blocks away. The punchbowl set was still inside, with nary a chip. I had tried to jam my computer into my own dishwasher, but it wouldn’t fit, so I’d stashed it in my dryer instead. Gary and I pulled up chairs to the table, and he began shuffling the deck of cards. When I admitted I’d forgotten the rules to gin rummy, he reeled off a complicated refresher course. Too distracted to follow, I eased my anxiety by petting the dogs beneath the table. Booger had settled on the floor next to Jack and Buster, both of whom outsized her exponentially. Buster was the new kid on the block; he’d only been part of my family for a few months. The bashful stray had wandered the neighborhood at will until Jack brought him home to live on my porch. Buster became Jack’s best bud and had even managed to win over my normally scrappy terrier, Frieda. When seventeen-year-old Frieda died from a seizure a few weeks later, the tawny dog soon graduated from a bed on the porch to one in the house. I was delighted to find that despite his shy demeanor, Buster was a steady storm comrade. None of the dogs seemed disturbed by the strident tornado warnings issuing from the radio like machine gun fire. The announcers blasted out the alarms, issuing two new ones for every one that expired. Other than a freak surge that topped Katrina’s, a tornado was the one thing that might reduce my house to matchsticks. As if he’d read my morbid thoughts, Gary dumped a box of matches onto the table. “Surely you know how to play poker,” he said. “We’ll use matches instead of money—that way you won’t go broke.” In that dim room with the branches of the oaks thrashing outside the windows, I tried to focus on the cards in my hand. Gambling seemed appropriate. I’d made the decision to stay in the Bay with my eyes wide open, knowing that several times a decade, I’d have to face the threat of hurricanes. The past two years of tame weather had lulled me into a blissful state of denial. Now, the surge was climbing up the railroad bridge, my computer was in the dryer, and Gustav beat at the door like a blustering loan shark, bent on collecting exorbitant interest on my false sense of security. I lost the first few hands of poker; then as my heart rate gradually returned to normal, good fortune smiled. Gary dealt me a full house. I bluffed by acting befuddled, and he bet enough matches to start a forest fire. I was scraping the large pot over to my side of the table when Joe burst in through the kitchen door. He’d run across to check on us and shook the rain from his coat as we exchanged the latest news. Robyn had evacuated New Orleans the day before to take refuge with him, and both were weathering the storm in his house with full electricity. I’d lost power the evening before, so I felt a stab of jealousy. Although Joe offered to bring over a meal later, I declined, since my gas stove still worked and I had a cooler full of thawing food from my freezer. Hoping for another easy mark, I tried to persuade Joe to play a few hands of poker with us, but he pulled up the hood of his raincoat and struck back out into the storm. While I dealt out another hand, I thought of friends who had sensibly evacuated. Hugh had texted me from his safe haven in Pensacola. Lori was well north of the coast in the new house she was building. Kat had taken refuge with friends in Columbia, Mississippi. We’d spoken the evening before, and Kat had expressed shock over my decision to stay. I explained that I’d planned to take cover with my friends Julie and Tommy in their recently completed house ten miles north. Before I left, I decided to download files from my older computer to a new one I’d just gotten. Late in the afternoon, a confident—and incompetent—computer tech I’d reached by phone had assured me that the transfer would only take an hour. The process had taken nine hours and couldn’t be aborted. By then, it was well past dark. Gary and Booger were settling into the guest apartment while the first real bands of the storm were windmilling overhead. I resigned myself to staying put and invited Buster and Jack into the loft bed with me. They quickly fell asleep, but I could not. The winds howled across the roof while I replayed the fiasco of the day before—when New Day” had turned into “Run Away.” It had seemed a splendid idea. While other coast communities would be grieving losses on the weekend of Katrina’s third anniversary, irrepressible Bay St. Louis would throw a party celebrating the future.  Participants at a Ward meeting, giving input on the town's future. Photo by Ellis Anderson  The official New Day in the Bay poster. Design by Jenny Bell The New Day concept kindled enthusiasm among both residents and city officials. It appeared that everyone was ready to put the past behind us and focus on the profusion of positive assets. Bay St. Louis was creating a stronger and more beautiful city; the festival presented an opportunity to strut our stuff and buck up community morale. New Day had provided my first experience as an event coordinator. I’d been offered the job by the Hancock County Chamber of Commerce, a client of the new public relations business I’d begun eighteen months before. No one seemed to mind that I was a novice at festival production, and several seasoned professionals volunteered to help. The event’s highlight would be a Civic Showcase, with more than seventy booths displaying their ongoing projects. Over a hundred local artists assembled a show with the theme of rebirth. The New Day team scheduled tours of historic sites, several bands, a frolic area for kids, and even an old-fashioned horseshoe tournament. The festival was slated for Saturday, August 30—the day after the third Katrina anniversary. On Tuesday, August 26, I started getting e-mails and calls from vendors worried about Gustav. Some computer models predicted that the storm would move into the Gulf by Saturday, then intensify and strike in our vicinity on Monday, September 1. I held tight to my belief that early predictions were invariably wrong. But Gustav refused to change course, and each day I watched as the little hurricane icon marched across the map in lockstep with the predicted path. Before the storm even reached Cuba, vendors cancelled by the dozens and spin-off events folded. On August 29, city leaders conferred and took a “plucky, but prepared” stance, deciding not to cancel the event. Mayor Eddie Favre announced that “while we’re watching Gustav very carefully, we want to maintain a sense of normalcy for as long as possible. The city has already undertaken preparations—cleaning drains, gassing up city vehicles, alerting residents—all the things that we’d do under normal emergency circumstances. “But Saturday evening, the New Day celebration will be a time for citizens to take a break from preparations made earlier in the day. As a community, we can come together, relax for a few hours, appreciate the many positive aspects of our life here and look towards our future.” Yet it became difficult for anyone in the community to maintain a sense of normalcy when media outlets fastened on the irony angle: on the anniversary of Katrina, another potentially devastating hurricane roared toward the coast. The post-traumatic trigger was pulled again and again as Katrina’s name was mentioned more frequently than Gustav’s. To complicate matters, on Friday, the governor’s office issued a mandatory evacuation for those in FEMA trailers and to residents in flood hazard zones. By Saturday afternoon, Old Town seemed like Ghost Town. A few hardy groups had set up booths, and their tents billowed with the winds of squalls that were racing overhead. Scattered pods of residents walked empty streets, pausing to exchange evacuation plans with neighbors. Many hugged, not knowing when they’d have the chance again—we all remembered the long and anxious separations caused by Katrina. Surveying the sorry scene, I wanted to cry. Dozens of volunteers had worked hundreds of hours in a wasted effort. I took the defeat personally and apologized to everyone I came across—the mayor, city councilmen, the police chief. They all laughed good-naturedly and talked about luck of the draw. Pulling his hand from the pocket of his shorts, the mayor shook my hand. “We’ll do it again!” he said. “But maybe not during hurricane season. . .”  "By Saturday afternoon, Old Town seemed like Ghost Town. A few hardy groups had set up booths, and their tents billowed with the winds of squalls that were racing overhead." photo by Ellis Anderson  "By Saturday afternoon, Old Town seemed like Ghost Town. A few hardy groups had set up booths, and their tents billowed with the winds of squalls that were racing overhead." photo by Ellis Anderson  Councilman Doug Seal and Mayor Eddie Favre, 2008, when New Day in the Bay fizzled because of Hurricane Gustav. Photo by Ellis Anderson When I offered an apology to chamber director Tish Williams, her mother overheard. Myrt Haas pulled me off to the side, and the dauntless matron gave me a sound rebuke. “You stop that right now!” she commanded. “Do you think you’re God? Did you personally steer Gustav in this direction? Now hold your head up, look people in the eye, and thank them for participating.” Still following Myrt’s advice a few hours later, Kat and I performed with our band at the local coffeehouse. Only a few stalwart souls sat at the tables arranged before the outdoor stage at the Mockingbird Café. Rogue gusts snatched at our sheet music and threatened to topple mike stands. One friend compared us to the dance band on the Titanic. Yet I was cheered as we sang, working from a set list that seemed to bizarrely befit the occasion. Kat grinned all the way through “Stormy Monday.” The sparse audience joined in with a rousing rendition of “You Are My Sunshine.” Harmonies fused our spirits as well as our voices when we sang “Solid Ground,” a Katrina ballad written by Kat’s daughter, Molly Fitzpatrick. The message of the chorus had never been more meaningful and seemed to spit directly into Gustav’s spinning eye. When the rains fall and the waters rise And the winds come and blow me down When the earth moves right before our eyes, We will lead each other back to solid ground . . . Tuesday, September 2, 2008 Gustav had crashed the party on Saturday, slept over Sunday night, and by Monday morning had raised enough hell to attract the attention of national media. We were hoping for peace by early Tuesday, but the ruffian refused to leave. That morning, while squalls still buffeted the town, I turned my video camera on a sleep-deprived Gary. “Gustav,” he groused. “The storm that wouldn’t end.” At least my electricity had been restored; it had been out less than ten hours. Joe was one of many residents in town who never lost power in the storm. I’d later hear a story from friends who had evacuated to Natchez, over two hundred miles north of the coast. The power in that antebellum city had been severed by Gustav, yet when the couple returned home to the Bay, they discovered not a clock in their house had lost a minute. I felt pride in the reliability of our power on the coast—it seemed to symbolize a hardened storm stance. I inspected my own house for damage and could find none except for the few places where water had breeched the new roof. There had been no flooding in my yard, so the moldy boxes from Katrina that remained beneath my house were uncompromised and still reproachfully calling for my attention. By late morning, the squalls had become more isolated. Gary and Booger headed back to their trailer, while Jack and Buster jumped into the back of my wagon, eager to take a tour of the town. I planned to go by the homes of friends who had evacuated, make a quick check of the properties, and phone the owners—I hoped with good news. Taking Citizen Street towards the beach, I passed Augusta’s new cottage, recently completed with the help of volunteers. Her little red truck wasn’t in the drive, so I assumed she’d taken refuge with relatives elsewhere. This would be a good report—all appeared to be in good order. Augusta’s home was one of dozens that had been constructed in my immediate neighborhood by volunteer forces. I often marveled that, even three years after Katrina, those good Samaritans had not forgotten us. Almost every week, I’d spot a new house going up, the construction site teeming with laboring teenagers and adults. Between Augusta’s home and the beach stood seven other new or renovated houses. Gustav hadn’t seemed to faze any of them. I was beginning to believe we’d skated by unscathed from the storm when I took a left on Beach Boulevard. I was only able to drive for two blocks toward Old Town before a barricade blocked my way. A sizable length of the temporary road that ran along the bluff had been pulverized by the surge and had avalanched down the eroded bank.  The beach road after Hurricane Gustav. Photo by Ellis Anderson  First responders in the aftermath of Hurricane Gustav, assessing the damage to the beach road. Photo by Ellis Anderson I might have been disheartened, but sighed with relief at the sight of the newly constructed pier for St. Stanis- laus College, a venerable prep school facing the beach. Beyond the ruined road, the new pier stretched proudly out into the Mississippi Sound and seemed to be unharmed. The long expanse of beach that runs beneath the pier is where I usually walk my dogs, and they whined in recognition, yearning to be let out for a good run. I ignored their pleas because I couldn’t even see the sand. It was covered with thickets of torn marsh grasses, sprinkled with sodden gray lumps. As I eased myself down the crumbled bank to get a better look, a small striped snake slid beneath my foot. I leapt back and saw dozens of them writhing in the mats of tangled vegetation. A bystander up on the road called out to warn me about the snakes. Although he identified them as a harmless swamp variety, I’d already retreated and had no plans to disturb them further. After thanking him, I asked about the gray forms on the beach. “They’re dead nutria rats,” the man said. “Guess this whole mess got washed out of the Louisiana swamps. You know, those nutria are a real problem there, they’ve taken over and are tearing up the levees.” He pointed up the coastline and wrinkled his nose. “There are hundreds of dead ones between here and Bayou Caddy. It’s gonna smell pretty bad in a day or two.” Gustav had apparently raped the barrier islands and the Louisiana wetlands, leaving us even more vulnerable to future storms. I thought of the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers, spending millions of taxpayer dollars to rebuild those defenses, yet easing the way for Mississippi developers to fill wetlands. The conflicting goals put forth by a single government agency seemed embodied by the endless snarls of refuse that covered the beach. My dogs didn’t care about politics. They wagged their tails, eager to chase after snakes and rodent corpses. Still pensive, I ignored them, got back into the car, and backtracked toward Main Street. The streets had been hazardous even before the rains of Gustav. Most roads in Old Town had been torn asunder in the last two years, with the object being to replace every sewage, water, and gas pipeline in Bay St. Louis. When I’d first heard that the city’s entire underground infrastructure would need replacement, I couldn’t understand how Katrina could have affected pipes beneath the streets. Later, in one report I’d read, a team of scientists said that “from half a continent away, we made an unusual seismic observation of a killer hurricane on Aug. 29, 2005 as Katrina bore down on New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. By using an array of 150 seismic stations in Southern California and a signal processing technique called beamforming to identify the seismic signal, we recorded a signal strength 1,000 times greater than that generated by volcanic tremor” (see resources section). I asked Buddy Zimmerman, who’d worked for twenty-three years asbassistant director of the city’s public works department about the possibility of Katrina’s thundering surge causing seismic damage to the underground utilities. That possibility hadn’t occurred to him, but he said that after the storm, over three dozen manhole covers had been missing from the streets. Since the gaping holes presented a huge safety issue, Zimmerman immediately assigned a crew to retrieve the covers. He gave directions to search within a hundred-foot radius of the openings. Zimmerman said, “At the end of the day, they’d only found one and that was 350 feet away from where it belonged, lying on the beach. My theory is that the surge pressed in from above, creating an enormous pressure on air trapped in the pipes. That could have created an explosive effect that just blew those covers to kingdom come. You can imagine what that would do to the pipes themselves.” He paused. “Those manhole covers are solid steel. They weigh over a hundred pounds each.” I drove slowly down the broken roads, avoiding the patches of flooding, when a mail truck turned into the road ahead of me. I did a double take and hit the brakes. The entire coastal region had been shut down for the major blow, and postal service had already resumed? Determined to catch a photograph, I forgot my caution, wheeled the car around, and chased the vehicle for several blocks. Finally, I zipped into a driveway a few houses ahead of the postman and was waiting when he pulled up to the mailbox and reached out his arm. He laughed when I asked for a picture, a little unsure about why I found his routine job so remarkable on this day. The image represented a big score for my Perfect Pictures game and I thought it deserved bonus points for the timing, just one day after a storm.  The mail being delivered the day after Hurricane Gustav, photo by Ellis Anderson  The Little Theatre building, 2008, photo by Ellis Anderson  The Little Theatre building on Blaize 2008, photo by Ellis Anderson  Thanks to help from Mississippi Department of Archives and History, the Little Theatre building was restored. Photo by Ellis Anderson On Blaize Avenue, I checked out the This Property Is Condemned building. Its shabby looks hadn’t changed much since Katrina, but the building was no longer a target for the wrecking ball. Earlier in the year, the Bay St. Louis Little Theatre had acquired it and was planning a full restoration. Local volunteers had cleaned it out, tidied the grounds, and propped up a sign facing the street. The piece of roofing tin had been painted red and lettered with white: “The Show Must Go On!” A few doors down, I stopped for a Coke at C. J.’s neighborhood grocery and overheard a few locals rating Gustav as “a good old-fashioned storm.” I understood what they meant. Most hurricanes barely create a blip on the radar of coast lives—rather like blizzards or ice storms up north, or minor earth tremors in California. They are natural events that disrupt everyday life—annoyances, not assassins. While a storm like Gustav might create mayhem in places like Baton Rouge and Natchez, the coast could handle an “old-fashioned” storm with poise. We regarded Katrina as a mutant, an obscene abnormality. We were building back with her in mind, but hoped it would be generations before another perfect storm would test our new mettle. Driving in front of the old city hall, I examined the grand shoofly oak next to it. I didn’t see any downed limbs, and the elaborate white wooden deck—the shoofly itself—blossomed unscathed from around the tree’s enormous trunk. A few months ago, I’d used the oak as a model for a public awareness campaign that encouraged coast residents to replant trees. In a series of photographs, several local celebrities had posed, literally hugging their favorite trees. Mayor Favre had chosen the shoofly oak, and the image showed the mayor wearing a nice shirt over his shorts, attempting to wrap his arms around the tree’s impressive girth. During the shoot, I explained that later in the day, I’d be heading home to visit my parents in North Carolina. The mayor’s easy smile snapped shut and he glowered at me. “Your home?” he said with incredulity. “Your home?” I read the meaning of his question with clarity. “North Carolina is the place I grew up,” I stammered. “Bay St. Louis is my home. This is my home.” His point made, the mayor’s smile returned. He embraced the tree and leaned against it, waiting for me to snap the shot. Passing the oak, I turned onto Main Street, and a large “OPEN” flag was the first thing I saw. I stopped the car again, laughing. The owner of the chocolate shop walked over, and I asked if he’d had any customers that day. “No,” said Dwight. “But you know me. I have to be here in case any show up.” I took his picture as he stood by the fluttering flag and drove on. Shops open, mail delivered, electricity restored. I knew that many homes had flooded and we’d be cleaning up for weeks, but we’d weathered our first storm since Katrina with composure intact. I’d only driven half a block before I pulled over again, stopping in front of my darling “Monkey House.” The historic cottage that had served as my gallery and home for almost ten years was in sad shape. Although she’d been gutted after Katrina, she awaited major structural repairs before restoration would begin in earnest. There was little traffic, so I let the dogs loose, and they followed me onto the porch. Jack sniffed obsessively at the doors of his old home, and I wondered what memories he could scent. I patted the front wall of the cottage, stroking her with affection. She’d survived for over 150 years and deserved some praise. Then I tilted my head back to look up at the large sign that hung on the eave of the house. It faced any passerby heading toward the beach, proclaiming a simple message.  Another sign had borne the same statement for almost a decade on a building closer to the beach. It had been braced like a billboard on the flat rooftop of Serenity Gallery, announcing “Something Wonderful Is Always Happening in Bay St. Louis.” With a single line, that sappy sentiment had summed up my feelings about the town. Yet, after Katrina, I’d discovered that it’d just been another illusion. In a conversation with the gallery founder, Jerry Dixon, I mentioned that the sign had seemed to personally welcome me to the Bay when I’d first moved into town. “Oh no, darling,” Jerry said. “The sign never said ‘Bay St. Louis.’ It didn’t say where something wonderful was happening—it left that part to the reader’s imagination.” Jerry even brought me a photo of the sign to prove it, and I could see that the word “Happening” was trailed by three tiny ellipses. My imagination had actually concocted the name of the town. Yet, my imaginary version of the sign still seemed on target. Even though Katrina had sucked huge parts of the town into the sea, some miracle magnet continued to attract magic. Each day, I witnessed evidence of its work. Why would I want to call another place “home”? But I still had to defend that decision on a regular basis. Why do you stay? Every resident of the coast hears that same persistent question, asked by well-meaning friends or family who live in other, presumably safer parts of the country. Kat and I had recently shared a meal and pondered the strange phenomenon of perpetual inquiry. Friends who blithely reside on major fault lines on the West Coast and in the Midwest had asked why we stayed. A family member who sees steam rise daily from the towers of a nearby nuclear plant questioned my resolve to live on the coast. Acquaintances in the Northwest were curious about our decision, although Yellowstone could become a super-volcano at any moment and pulverize three states. Considering the odd terrorist or psycho and the looming possibility of an economic meltdown that would cause the total collapse of society, it seemed clear to Kat and me that everyone alive faced some catastrophic risk on a daily basis. But the people of the coast lived with less illusion. That clarity of vision—although hardly comforting—seems to make our colors more vivid, our landscapes more endearing, and the lines of love between us stand out bold and strong. “Well,” Kat said. “When the world ends, I want to be in Bay St. Louis. We’ve had plenty of practice. And I know that here, we’ll take care of each other, even in the very worst of times.” The rain had started up again, a last gasp from Gustav, which had moved on to the north. I opened the back door to the car and the dogs jumped in without command. I took another look up at the sign. Like our town, it had been patterned on the old, but the new one was quite different. Yet the conviction of both remained the same: Something Wonderful Is Always Happening . . . Author's Note: The sign now hangs on the side of the Mockingbird Café! The Shoofly Magazine has published 12 of Under Surge's 25 chapters to commemorate Hurricane Katrina's 20th anniversary. Missed one? Below are links to each installment:  Under Surge, Under Siege is available in paperback and as an ebook.
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