Disaster beyond belief.

We arrived back in Austin yesterday after being mainly in Florida for the past couple of months. A very nice time was had visiting Joan and Phil for Thanksgiving and then going on a 10 day cruise with them to Panama followed by a 6 day trip to Jamaica with Mike and Bob. To say that we had a good time would be an understatement. Actually, I should exempt the past two days from the good times.

Driving back from Florida to Texas the past three days, we decided to pass through the hurricane ravaged areas of Mississippi, Louisiana and southeastern Texas. Holy Cow. From Biloxi, Mississippi, westward to Beaumont, Texas, a distance of over 300 miles, there was devastation the likes of which can’t even be imagined. I’ve posted many pictures in the photo gallery but to say that pictures don’t do it justice is so totally correct. I, along with everyone else, had seen news reports and magazine and newspaper articles and photographs but to see it in person was just unbelievable.

We had passed through that exact same area on our way from Austin to Florida last May and saw the beautiful old antebellum houses lining the shore along the gulf coast in the Biloxi area. Today, there is nothing left. Thousands of magnificent homes with Spanish moss covered trees in the front yards are just gone… nothing but the bare foundations left. And the trash. You just can’t imagine the trash. Everywhere you look are mountains of rubble. And it goes on for mile after mile after mile. So sad.

And then there’s New Orleans. As bad as the gulf coast was, the lower ninth ward of New Orleans was just as bad and in some ways, worse. In some areas entire blocks of houses were washed away by the walls of water that breached the levees. Further back from the levees, the houses were still intact but were trashed from sitting in water up to the roof level. Even driving around other areas of town, it was easy to see how high the water levels had been by the water marks on the walls of the buildings. And square mile after square mile of homes all over the city had piles of rubble on the sidewalks and in the streets. Truly the magnitude of the situation can’t be fully grasped without personally visiting the area.

Pictures in the gallery.