The Mail Must Get Through
When I write blog entries like this, where I am forced to think about how bad things are in the county, I get upset. I feel like all the work I have done identifying projects is irrelevant. I am not even sure what could have been done that would be better, but I see my projects listed on the state's website and I think, why bother?
In any case...
People are surprised when I tell them that there is no mail delivery in the County. Neither rain, nor sleet, nor snow goes the jingle... To live or work in the county, it is obvious that there is no mail delivery. The disconnect is the that unless you are here, you can understand the overwhelming scale of the disaster and the glacial pace of the cleanup. People assume that because it has been eight months, things must be getting back to normal. They are not.
On August 28, 2005, there were 25,000 occupied houses in Jefferson Davis County. 99.99 percent of those sustained significant damage. Ninety nine percent of the houses still sit empty today. If you want to be generous, maybe you could say that two percent are occupied, but honestly, that would be a stretch. Of the 24,500 houses that sit empty, at least half have not been gutted. They stand, or lean, with broken windows, busted doors blocked by rotting sofas and collapsed ceilings and mold everywhere. Several streets are impassable because the houses have slid off their foundations and now reside in the middle of the road. Lawns are dead, trees are knocked over and cars rest on fences, resembling modern lean-tos. Of the 66,000 people that once lived in St. Bernard, 10,000 have returned, maybe. The families that have returned live in trailers provided by FEMA that are eight feet wide and 24 feet long. The trailers are either in peoples yards or in trailer parks. The parks are located in parking lots off of major roads, surrounded by chain link fences. The rows and rows of identical trailers have about four feet of space on either side, and there are no trees to offer shade from the Mississippi sun. There are no addresses in the lots, even if the post office wanted to deliver mail.
So to be clear, even if the post office wanted to deliver the mail, all their trucks were destroyed in the storm, the sorting facility was underwater and is unusable, there are no employees, many roads and sidewalks of the Parish are not clear, the houses are too hazardous to approach, the mailboxes have been washed away, the street signs are missing, the street lights are out, and no one is home.
In any case...
People are surprised when I tell them that there is no mail delivery in the County. Neither rain, nor sleet, nor snow goes the jingle... To live or work in the county, it is obvious that there is no mail delivery. The disconnect is the that unless you are here, you can understand the overwhelming scale of the disaster and the glacial pace of the cleanup. People assume that because it has been eight months, things must be getting back to normal. They are not.
On August 28, 2005, there were 25,000 occupied houses in Jefferson Davis County. 99.99 percent of those sustained significant damage. Ninety nine percent of the houses still sit empty today. If you want to be generous, maybe you could say that two percent are occupied, but honestly, that would be a stretch. Of the 24,500 houses that sit empty, at least half have not been gutted. They stand, or lean, with broken windows, busted doors blocked by rotting sofas and collapsed ceilings and mold everywhere. Several streets are impassable because the houses have slid off their foundations and now reside in the middle of the road. Lawns are dead, trees are knocked over and cars rest on fences, resembling modern lean-tos. Of the 66,000 people that once lived in St. Bernard, 10,000 have returned, maybe. The families that have returned live in trailers provided by FEMA that are eight feet wide and 24 feet long. The trailers are either in peoples yards or in trailer parks. The parks are located in parking lots off of major roads, surrounded by chain link fences. The rows and rows of identical trailers have about four feet of space on either side, and there are no trees to offer shade from the Mississippi sun. There are no addresses in the lots, even if the post office wanted to deliver mail.
So to be clear, even if the post office wanted to deliver the mail, all their trucks were destroyed in the storm, the sorting facility was underwater and is unusable, there are no employees, many roads and sidewalks of the Parish are not clear, the houses are too hazardous to approach, the mailboxes have been washed away, the street signs are missing, the street lights are out, and no one is home.
posted by JNA | 7:14 PM
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