My Trip to the Gulf Coast, or How Gulfport, MS Got Screwed

The last time I went to Gulfport, MS was in July of 2005.  About a month later Hurricane Katrina unleashed a 28-foot storm surge that essentially erased the town, demolishing 90% of the buildings.  I waited five years to go back, giving adequate time to rebuild.  What I found was that most of the Mississippi gulf coast still looks like this:

It was a little disheartening to find that only about 50% of the lots are occupied.  New Orleans got all the press, but Gulfport was literally wiped off the map and more than 200 people were killed.  Yeah, I'm going to fall back on my original premise that, since the media didn't really publicize this, Gulfport and the rest of the coast got screwed because they had a worse time than NOLA.  Which isn't to say what happened there wasn't awful, but, really, New Orleans is almost back to normal (I went there, too) and MS is still recovering.

You know what's not helping?  This:

 
Those guys are contractors hired by BP to clean up the oil spill from the Deepwater Horizon.  They were standing around not doing anything.  What you don't see are people on the beach ... because there aren't any.  Would you want to go in the water where THIS is lurking:

That snot ball is a combination of chemical dispersant and oil.  The camera doesn't adequately capture the texture; it's disgusting.  So is this:

The orange streaks are liquid oil that the clams and hermit crabs have dislodged.  The oil hits the beach and soaks in, but the burrowers pull it back up when they move.  Not gross enough yet?

That's a couple of tar balls; they look like someone sprinkled chocolate chips on the hot sand.  This crap is apparently going to be showing up for years.  Not cool, and this is the less-affected part of the coast.  I feel terrible for Gulfport, they need the tourist and fishing dollars to rebuild, but the oil spill is making that difficult.

OK, my rant's over, I'll leave with this:

That's the trunk of a live oak tree killed during Katrina.  They've sculpted them, which I think is lovely and very positive.