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  • SUNDAY OCTOBER 16 2005 8:00 AM

A Relief Mission in Pictures

Submitted by Shal

Edited by Shal

We've all read stories of the relief efforts in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina devastated the city, but many, many other cities were hit just as hard, if not harder.

Suicidegirls.com members Idjiit and Stiles went beyond donating money and sympathy to victims of the hurricane. A few days after the extent of the damage became apparent, Stiles gathered supplies, loaded up a truck trailer, picked up Idjiit, and drove through the Gulf Coast visiting communities destroyed by the hurricane but that weren't receiving the kind of national attention that New Orleans was getting at the time.

The photographic record of their journey tells the story, starting off with almost a "buddy movie" feel. As they get deeper into hurricane-damaged areas, the tone of their comments changes dramatically.

Bayou La Batre, AL - Date: 9/14/2005
When we arrive here at a local EOC, we immediately run into FEMA representatives outside taking a smoke break. They seem a bit weary, and when we ask how things are going one of them says “Good, this is the first day I haven’t had some cuss or spit on me”. These poor guys, taking the brunt of frustrations concerning policies they have nothing to do with. When I ask if I can take their photo, they decline immediately. When we ask about dropping off clothes, they’re the first of many to say that’s the one thing they really don’t need. FEMA’s presence here really just involves getting people registered in their system to handle claims, etc. There isn’t much in regards to “relief” here – that’s the Red Cross’ responsibility, apparently. They say we can take supplies to them, but that the folks down the road in Coden could probably use it more, so we head off.

Biloxi, MS - Date: 9/15/2005
Near a flipped over car, some folks are working on a house that looks pretty intact, considering how close it is to the beach. A sign out front warns “Looter Beware”.

Biloxi, MS - Date: 9/15/2005
Looking across the street, more warnings have been scrawled – “Will Shoot to Kill”.

Gulfport, MS - Date: 9/15/2005
Ed is standing at what looks to be where the water line peaked. It's easily 20-25 feet above where I'm standing.

Pass Christian, MS - Date: 9/16/2005
As we start driving down the road, things get much worse very very quickly. This is easily the worst damage we’ve seen. The buildings are just gone. The only thing left being the scraps of wood spray painted with the address, insurance carrier and name of occupant.



Their week-long trip let them help distribute supplies to people who needed quick relief at the time, but the long-term recovery needs were obvious.

Idjiit, who is a photographer, plans to write a grant application to travel back through those areas and offer to take new family portraits and have them framed for families who lost everything. He closes the travelogue with a few thoughts:

This marked the end of our tour. In conversations later we both remarked feeling like Destruction Tourists - something we both felt a bit weird about. Is snapping photos of disaster tacky at a time where people around you are busy cleaning up and moving on with their lives? I don't know. My only real rationalization is that people need to see these sorts of tragedies and relay the stories back to people they know in attempt to make them part of the larger human experience. I kept thinking as we toured how I hoped that the people from all over the country would go back to their respective states and tell people what they saw. My political motivations can't be hidden - I hope they go back and tell everyone how screwed up the FEMA response was, how pathetic it was that volunteers had to save the Gulf because our country can't deal with it. How survivors of this tragedy have to sit around for days simply to get through to a FEMA representative so they can start building their lives again.

As for me, it's reinforced how important public service is, and in lieu of a competent government, volunteerism. So I'm already planning my next trip as a volunteer, and I encourage the viewers of this work to do the same.

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Comments
Sloane

Sloane

SUICIDEGIRL

California, USA

OCT 17, 2005 01:45 PM

Wow, that was amazing.

Thanks for sharing it.

Frenchy

Frenchy

San Francisco, CA
November 2004

OCT 17, 2005 03:53 PM

Congrats on the trip, the help and the photos!
Good call on the Mac wink

What shocked me the most was prolly to see dozen of cars flipped on the roof like pancakes...

What a journey! It's good to see that some pple did get out of their daily routine to help out - once again congrats on the effort!!

P.S. Safari users, you need to stretch the open window to be able to read the text.

Idjit

Idjit

HOPEFUL

I'm lost

OCT 17, 2005 06:07 PM

Goob said:
The hardest part was seeing Bay St. Louis... My car broke down there once on the way to New Orleans, and a local family went out of their way for us, towing the car, fixing it super cheap, and helping us get to NOLA to have a decent vacation.



Yeah, it's definitely interesting when you hit parts that you alredy had some sort of connection to. Seeing St. Michael's definitely had a different impact than everything else since I knew it well beforehand. Even though other parts of the Gulf were much more devasted, seeing this beautiful building gutted, with a 50ft high Casino barge sitting yards away from it was just... bleah. Words cannot describe adequately.

Thanks again to everyone, especially those who slogged through the text. Sorry about the Safari bug, I'll try to fix it tonight.

Sloane

Sloane

SUICIDEGIRL

California, USA

OCT 17, 2005 06:23 PM

Idjiit said:

Goob said:
The hardest part was seeing Bay St. Louis... My car broke down there once on the way to New Orleans, and a local family went out of their way for us, towing the car, fixing it super cheap, and helping us get to NOLA to have a decent vacation.



Yeah, it's definitely interesting when you hit parts that you alredy had some sort of connection to. Seeing St. Michael's definitely had a different impact than everything else since I knew it well beforehand. Even though other parts of the Gulf were much more devasted, seeing this beautiful building gutted, with a 50ft high Casino barge sitting yards away from it was just... bleah. Words cannot describe adequately.

Thanks again to everyone, especially those who slogged through the text. Sorry about the Safari bug, I'll try to fix it tonight.




Agreed. My childhood best friend moved to Biloxi when we were 13 and I've been to visit many times - it's where I got my first tattoo! I know a bunch of people in Biloxi and Gulfport and everyone lost everything. My best friend's mom lost her house...for the second time in 5 years or so (first was in a fire).

Anyway, it was so weird seeing a familiar place so changed.

I don't know if "enjoyed" is the right word, but for lack of a better one, I really enjoyed the thoughtful photos and re-telling of your adventure. It took me two hours to absorb the whole thing, but it was time well spent.

Idjit

Idjit

HOPEFUL

I'm lost

OCT 17, 2005 06:32 PM

Wow, thanks for taking the time to really go through it! blush

At some point I want to go through and do a more condensed version with more of a focus on making the photos the best they can be, but my spare time is pretty non-existentent.

If anyone has question, let me know.





As for Safari - I fixed one problem with the window resizing code, but unfortunately it looks like if you've got a "normal" sized screen that isn't higher than 768 pixels wide Safari may choke on the resize still. It's a bug I don't really have time to work around right now. I would recommend that Macintosh users view the gallery through Firefox if they've got it. smile

AnalogColor

AnalogColor

Atlanta, GA
June 2004

OCT 17, 2005 06:40 PM

All very powerful images. The desperation is overwhelming and frustrating at the same time. Seeing all of the destruction and distress and seeing no help in sight is frustrating.


About the stretching window...its the same thing with firefox.

tomahto

tomahto

San Bruno, CA
June 2003

OCT 17, 2005 07:16 PM

I've got one too!

shitty site, though, I just slapped it together:

http://www.pawprintpetphoto.com/louisiana.html

zenFish

zenFish

Vancouver, BC
August 2004

OCT 17, 2005 08:02 PM

I'm glad the two of you did this, by not only just showing people what the damage really is (we do need to remember the past, or else be somewhat doomed to repeat it), but also by helping people along the way.

AdamJ

AdamJ

Revere, MA
February 2005

OCT 17, 2005 08:21 PM

Idjiit said:

AdamJ said:

papawheelie said:
"It’s no secret that I am not a religious man. In fact, in my youth I was vehemently anti-religious. As I’ve aged and my range of experiences with religious people has grown, I’ve gained much more respect for adherents and the way that religion informs their lives on a personal level. This trip in particular has shown one of the critical roles that our nation’s religious organizations play. Virtually every stop we made was at a church, or at a location negotiated by a religious organization. The vast majority of people we ran into had been organized in some way by a religious organization. Where are the secular organizations mobilizing to help the victims of tragedies such as these? We didn’t see them. Near everyone we talked to said that without the volunteers involved in the relief effort, the people of the Gulf would be lost. This means that without the structure of religious organizations in the US, these people would be lost. Not just in the manpower sense, but in the spiritual sense. Regardless of whether there is a God or not, there is no denying the solace that such a unifying belief can have in such a crisis. I hope that in this time of renew religious conservatism and the subsequent religious backlash it has created that people on both sides can see that the thing we should fear the most is extremism on either end. There is a happy medium."



To be fair to those who are secular and non-religious(such as myself), there is the fact that we are a minority in this country, making up about 5 to 10 percent of the total population, if memory serves me right. So asking why there weren't so many atheists or agnostics there is like asking why there weren't any albinos there, or why there weren't any Maoris there. There just aren't that many of us, period, and that limits the number of us who are available to help.

[Edited on Oct 16, 2005 by AdamJ]



My statement goes deeper than just saying "why weren't the atheists there cleaning up", it also asks questions about how a secular world in general might deal with tragedies such as this. A lot of it stems from my feeling of impotence relating to people who are dealing with the crisis first hand. I feel like secular society lacks a means to effectively deal with grieving, solace and providing hope in hopeless situations. As an agnostic who's effectively atheist it's an interesting problem to think about. What is the unifying experience that binds us together with a common language to inform our lives as human beings? SG? CSI? The Simpsons? Whether "spirits" actually exist (I suspect they do not), I think that "spirituality" is an important part of human existence.



I see what you're getting at, that non-religious philosophies don't directly address how we can cope with a universe that is indiferent to tragedy and pain. It is a hard pill to swallow. One idea that helps me deal with it is something I read while posting on an atheist newsgroup a while back. Basically, it goes like this: while we as individuals do perish, our actions towards others echo on into the future. The child you teach to be kind to others and help the needy grows up to live that way. The people who are helped by said child are touched by his/her compassion, and they strive to live their lives, if even in only a small way, more like the person who helped them. Positive actions ripples onwards and outwards, long after the originator is gone. It might not be huge, but we can do something to improve the world, if only in a small way. Or, as the old saying goes, better to light a candle than curse the darkness.

Thank you for bringing this point up, it has been most interesting and enjoyable to discuss it.

Kalina

Kalina

Laredo, TX
April 2005

OCT 20, 2005 03:37 PM

Wow! Those pictures are INCREDIBLE! It's so sad to see all the horrific damage and extreme devastation. You guys did such a great job with the photos and most definitely the relief effort. I praise you both and all those who contributed very very much.

Cherries

Cherries

SUICIDEGIRL

Missouri, USA

OCT 31, 2005 12:10 PM

Thank you.

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