Remembering The Storm Tower
Nineteen years ago today (August 29, 2005) Hurricane Katrina devastated the Mississippi Gulf Coast. We lived in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi at the time about 200 feet from the Bay of Saint Louis. We evacuated over 100 miles north to a home that belonged to one of our Bay St. Louis neighbors. Katrina came over us at that “safe house” as a Category 1 hurricane. We knew that our home on the coast, if by some miracle was still standing, would be badly damaged. It took four days before we were able to clear the driveway of fallen trees and drive back to see that our home had been obliterated by cyclonic winds (tornado) and the property covered in thick, stinking mud.
We lived on our property first in a FEMA provided travel trailer for 2.5 years and then a modular cottage provided by the state to replace the trailer. Three years after the storm we moved off of our property to a rental unit while we designed and built a new home where the destroyed house had been.
Over the years I took thousands of photographs to document the damage and recovery as we rebuilt our lives. Today’s featured image is one of those photographs.
In 1898 President William McKinley wanted to establish a hurricane warning system for ships and The US Weather Bureau (now called The National Weather Service) started building Storm Warning Towers. These towers were officially known as coastal warning display towers. Originally pennants were flown at the top of the towers to warn of different conditions and lights were used at night. Around 1925 radio stations were disseminating local weather forecasts and use of the flags and lights were discontinued.
Very few towers remain today. Only a few have been replaced or replicated for historical purposes. The tower located on North Beach Blvd. in Bay St. Louis stood tall, with working lights if I remember correctly, until the early morning hours of August 29, 2005.
After Katrina blew through the Mississippi Coast, the tower in Bay St. Louis was crumpled and twisted up with debris along North Beach Blvd. precisely where it had stood for generations.
In the years following the hurricane, clean-up crews slowly made their way through the neighborhoods and downtown area picking up and hauling off debris.
However, none of the clean-up crews would pick up the mangled metal that was once a sturdy, historic tower. Slabs where houses once stood were demolished and the landscape was cleared of debris and mud. People that were able started the rebuilding process. But that mangled mess of metal remained.
The reason clean-up crews hesitated to clear the tower’s remaining metal was because the tower was technically United States Government Property that was not to be destroyed or removed! Eventually someone got permission to remove the remnants of that tower and today there is not even a hint of where it stood.
The Mississippi Gulf Coast has rebounded even though many people were never able to return or rebuild for financial and/or emotional reasons. Bay St. Louis is actually thriving again with new infrastructure, a marina and new businesses, but without many of its historic buildings and structures.
Today there will be memorial services to remember the lives lost as a result of Hurricane Katrina. Survivors in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama as well as those scattered across the nation will never forget the experiences they lived through during and after that storm just as survivors of other disasters remember their own experiences.
I will be remembering our neighbors – a few that we didn’t know before the storm but met and loved through the aftermath. Some of our neighbors returned and rebuilt and some of them were never able to return.
Today I remember all of them with gratitude for the role they played in my life and the love we shared during that time of tribulation.
Click here to view a larger version of today’s featured image.
