1 The one friend I managed to hear from, only because he was visiting a brother in Houston, sent me some camera phone pics of Pascagoula. I managed to run across a photo package from the local paper in Biloxi of my old neighborhood in Gulfport a the corner of Hwy 90 and Lorrain Cowan Rd. It has effectively ceased to exist and there is no word on the fate of my former neighbors, most of which are retired folks and I have stayed in touch with over the years.

I fear the worst for alot of them. It's a truly heartbreaking situation.

Thanks for the concern Ted.

2 Looking at those pictures--especially the blue/purple structure in the lower right-hand corner...look to the left of that structure. In the before picture, there's a large building and a parking lot. In the after picture, there's the large building and a large something in the parking lot, at a funny angle.

I think it's a barge.

Jeeze Louise.

3 I believe the structure in the lot is a casino barge and the blue structure is possibly the Aquarium?I blew it up with the maginifier and it appears to have three other objects inside of it like the tanks in all of the media footage.Could just be a marina or something though.
On the weather channel the afternoon before Katrina hit Jim Cantore was talking to the owner of a casino barge the size of an aircraft carrier who was trying to get the last of his close up done.The next day the barge was sitting on top of a Howard Johnson's.You couldn't even see the HoJo because it was flattened under the barge.
One other story that freaked me out was that during the height of the storm they had to send out three tugs into downtown Birmingham to retrieve an oil tanker that was bouncing off of the skyscrapers like a pinball.
Then again there's the pics of the big bridge down there that was closed because it had an offshore oil rig jammed up under it.There where 11 oil rigs missing from the gulf last I heard.

4 Russ, are you sure it was Birmingham? Mobile, maybe, but Birmingham is in northern Alabama, halfway between Montgomery and Tennessee.

5 Yeah it probably was Mobile.Now you know why I need a GPS unit.I get backasswards like that sometimes.

6 Victor - yeah, there's a barge or boat moored in the first picture that looks like what ended up in the parking lot. And looking at the cars in the first picture, it ain't exactly small.

Yikes.

7 I should've mentioned that those photos were taken more than a year apart, according to the NOAA. That'll account for some detail differences.

That probabaly is a barge tossed ashore, it's probably not the same one in both photos.

8 A little bit of net searching tells me that the casino in the before photo is most likely the Copa Gulfport and the blue thing is the Marine Life Oceanarium.The dolphins are now living in a hotel swimming pool.Serious!
The little roundy round "circus" road near the bottom and a bit to the left is the junction of Jones Park Dr.,23rd Ave and Gulfport Harbor St.

9 The Copa Casino is in the before picture. It is the ship in the lower right moored at the state port. It used to be called the Pride of Mississippi and had to sail for people to gamble before dockside gaming passed. It was always breaking down. So they used it stationary for a few years before towing it off and replacing it with the barge that is shown about 200 yds south on dry land. The blue/purple structure is the Grand Casion complex. Half of it is now sitting across Hwy 90.

The other thing that is pretty gnarly is that the Mississippi State Port deals alot in frozen poultry and bananas. Dole banana has a big container yard there. If you eat Dole bananas, chances are they come through Gulfport. The frozen chicken goes all over the place but mostly to Russia and China. The poultry freezers are all on the west side of the port. You may have seen some of the pictures where it appears to have flooded crates or waxed freezer boxes with Dole container trailers scattered about? Yep, 15 or 20 tons of frozen chicken thawing in the September heat. They say the stench is something to behold.