Mississippi meetinghouse becomes survivors' shelter

WAVELAND, Miss. -- This is where Katrina hit hardest, where they have fished 40 bodies from the bayou and beaches, where National Guard, FEMA, state and local agencies are headquartered. This is where the local police and fire department vehicles -- buffeted by saltwater surges -- stand ruined amid need, where people and pastorages from the Midwest have pulled trailers of supplies, and where people are living in tents.

This is where stores are not merely roofless but obliterated masses of metal, and boats lie unmoved on the main street nearby.

But in Waveland itself, a waterfront town, there is nothing left.

Foundations are washed clean of even rubble, with mounds of debris littering the road. It wasn't just dumped; it was stirred and twisted. Few if any structures remain standing on beaches, with piers stripped of boards where the 30-foot surge rampaged like an apocalypse; scorned Katrina took all, left none.

Two members of the Waveland Ward of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are among the known dead -- Terrence and Christina Shields. Others are feared dead, and bodies remain in the funerary ruins that was once a beach city.

There are no phones, no electricity, no plumbing, no gasoline and barely passable roads where trees have been sawed into stumps. However, the LDS Church supplied local Bishop Robert Garrett with a satellite phone. Emergency food and water supplies have been brought in by church trucks.

Bishop Garrett, a Navy meteorologist, placed all the emphasis he could to get his people out of town for what he knew would be utter destruction.

"I told them to get out! Go!" he said. At a short meeting Sunday, he re-emphasized the gravity of the situation, and more left. Some didn't have means to leave.

His home fared relatively well, a few punched holes in the roof, but it is dry and muck-free inside. That's different than most.

About two-thirds of the 630-member LDS ward are less active, and some have never been located because of obscure addresses.

"There are so many areas that are unaccessible," he said, explaining that he first was trying to determine the status of members before assessing the damage and planning repairs.

He estimated half have lost homes.

"Where do we go from here? When you see the devastation and people who have lost everything. I pray every night that we will be strong enough to rebuild. Rhetoric is one thing, and the actual will is another thing. This whole ordeal saps the will out of them. There is no way to see beyond. If you were able to get into your home, and if there was water there, and 6 inches of muck on the floor, and it smells so bad, and it was so hot and sweltering -- yesterday was the hottest day of the year -- you try to save what you can, but feelings of hopelessness quickly overwhelm you."

The Waveland Ward meetinghouse is framed by drooping and fallen telephone wires. On the lawn are tents with members and neighbors. In the parking lot are a motor home, a semi-tractor, and equipment for front-end loaders that are parked here at night for security. Helicopters fly overhead, and along the side and nearby main street are the incessant flashing lights. Some are blue emergency accompanied by sirens, some yellow utility accompanied by the rumble of heavy engines.

Several families now call this home -- home, for what they own is now here.

Truck driver Roy Moore was in Arkansas when Katrina hit. He drove straight here, arriving after his wife, Charlotte, had survived the storm. She and two other women and several children brought her 72- hour kit, some food, clothing and a handful of DVDs to entertain the children, and a mattress.

"I thought I was silly bringing a mattress," she said. "Two, three days tops, and we'd be back with power, like (Hurricane) Camille."

As Katrina raged, water flowed from the ocean across everything. At one point she saw a minnow swim past the door.

"We're going to be all right," she said. A little later she saw a 6-inch fish swim past. "Maybe we're not," she observed.

Some neighbors joined them part way through the storm. They had seen the water reach their windows, so they opened the windows and splashed out. By the time her neighbor, John Chagnard, rescued his mother-in-law across the street, water had reached chest high.

They were welcomed and are safe at the solid meetinghouse, one of the few buildings in town that escaped damage.

When the water began seeping into the meetinghouse, she saw a duck, by the Primary room, and "its little feet were (paddling) like it was trying to get in."

They could hear the banging of copper sheathing from the house next door.

She marked the windows to track the progress of the water, and soon it began to subside.

After the storm, she returned to her apartment and another member who volunteers with the fire department kicked in the door to the now-ruined building. From under the mud, they extracted her year's supply of food.

Since then, they've been supplied with ice, MREs and a generator.

Maurice Steber said he helped with body recovery. He described the effects of the 30-foot surge "that reduced everything to toothpicks," saying the inland water was contaminated with raw sewage.

An evening at the meetinghouse was an experience in survival, where even the most simple of human needs is a project. They dined on MREs, which defy opening except with a sharp instrument.

Moore's trucking company put him back on the road Saturday. In the tractor is a television that is helping track the weather, which portends three more possible storms.

"Shush," said Charlotte Moore. "We won't talk about it." But they track the storms with magnets on a map and check the television frequently.

The evening was called early for darkness. Batteries are scarce and lights are turned on sparingly. Bathrooms are in semi-order, and a generator helped illuminate the ladies' room. Two Steber children were bathed in a picnic container and wore men's T-shirts. They hugged their friends and retired to a pup tent. Other tents stood on the lawn unoccupied.

In the morning, the day started with the walking of dogs, which everyone seems to have, and more MREs.

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