The area that we were assigned to patrol lay along Highway 90, which runs along the Gulf Coast through Gulfport and into Biloxi. It was, we were told, the area that had been hit the hardest. And it was easy to believe.
That part of Highway 90, which is also called East Beach Boulevard, is a four-lane highway with a sloping, grassy median dividing it. Or it was, at any rate. The upper part of the road had, generally, survived better, though it had yawning gaps in it where the ground beneath had given way and the asphalt folded under. There were spots where you had to drive up onto the grass to get by, and places where you had to go down to the lower lanes, though they were generally buried in sand. The median was a total loss, a knife wound of clumpy sand between the two stretches of blacktop. There were sections of deep standing water where the road surface had buckled downward, and at least one of those concealed an open manhole which Burke's front tire found the hard way.
Our patrol area ran back for two or three blocks from the beachfront, as far as a set of railroad tracks. The railroad tracks were a border, and served as a kind of DMZ separating our area from the rest of the city. Fortunately for everyone living north of them, the tracks were elevated on an earth and rock berm that was just high enough to serve as a makeshift levee. The flood surge had thundered over Highway 90, past Second Street and Third Street, but didn't have the muscle to get past the tracks.
The front rank of houses facing the beachfront were all heavily damaged; many of them were blasted to splinters by the water, and the pieces swept back two or three blocks. Second Street was all but impassable to vehicle traffic, since the debris was piled high in the roadway. Entire blocks were sealed off behind sudden barricades of framing wood, their nails sticking everywhichwhere. You could see the force of the storm in the things scattered around. They weren't just lying on the lawn. They were embedded in the ground, some with a three-foot furrow in the turf behind them, where the storm water had plowed them through. Burke and I found a broomstick which was plunged halfway into the grass like a javelin, and later, a truck axle which had done the same thing. After our first day on patrol, I packed away my air-cushioned pseudo-SWAT footwear in favor of my old Marine-issue jungle boots, which drain quickly and have a steel shank in the sole to prevent pushing a nail through my foot.
Navigation was made very difficult by the fact that all the street signs were torn down and many of the landmarks were nothing but foundations. Even the Gulfport cops, who had patrolled the area for years, were having trouble getting around. Burke and I managed to get by on a simple hand-drawn map which was painstakingly drawn in my police notebook by a very nice lady whose house had been utterly destroyed. She and her two college-aged children had brought a U-Haul trailer out and were picking through, looking for anything they could save.
She was a Gulfport native - she had attended the school we were occupying, and was still, unquestionably, the lady of the house. Nothing was left of the house but the foundation, but luckily no one had been home. Her children had been in college, her husband away, and she herself had been out of town visiting relatives. "If I hadn't," she said matter-of-factly, gesturing at the ruined slab where her home had stood. "I'd have been in this house."
While we were there, one of her kids found a fabric case containing some of their seasonal tableware: a stack of plates of various sizes, with little Christmas trees on them. They were covered in dirt, but otherwise completely undamaged. "It's amazing what survives," she told me.
Yes. Yes, it is. Godspeed, Mrs. H.
Ofc. Krupke at 6:55 PM
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