Though Hurricane Gustav was played down as a near-miss storm that largely spared the Gulf Coast, the flooding and consequent damage did deal a devastating blow to the morale of many residents who had finally begun to regain a sense of stability for the first time since Katrina struck in 2005.
Some are calling it quits, including residents of Pearlington, Miss., an Experience Mission partner community. While Gustav’s damage was light in comparison to Hurricane Katrina and newer structures withstood the storm, a general sense of discouragement is sinking in among those who have twice suffered significant property damage.
Janyne Evans, 52, owns the popular Turtle Landing restaurant in Pearlington. She said two good friends of hers—who are also good customers—are choosing to skip town.
“They’re going to pack up and they’re moving out. They can’t handle losing everything continuously,” Evans said during a telephone interview. She said she had just gotten back to the Turtle Landing to find the bottom floor flooded with water and was assessing the overall damage.
As she spoke, she said, she was awaiting an evacuation order for Hurricane Ike.
Other residents who suffered through Hurricane Katrina, however, had cause to be thankful. While 137 homes in Pearlington suffered water damage due to Gustav, those built in accordance with more stringent new building codes remained largely unscathed.
Many of those homes, which are raised on sturdy posts to sit at least 15 feet above sea level, were built by EM volunteers in partnership with the Pearlington Recovery Center (PRC).
“All the new houses are fine, because they’re all on posts. None of them got water, none of them lost a single possession,” PRC Director Glenn Lockin said. “All the houses are perfect, which is just a blessing.”
Locklin said that while the storm set community restoration work back about 90 days, the return to normalcy seemed streamlined, and just days after the residents returned from a mandatory evacuation, Pearlington was up and running as it had been before. Still, he said that rather than the optimistic sense of community that has fueled much of the Katrina recovery effort, many people appear downtrodden.
“The faith is not here, which I was kind of surprised by,” Locklin said. “They’re nervous, and I do understand that.”
Locklin is trying to stay positive. He himself lost a car to the storm, but said he wasn’t sweating it too much.
“It’s all good. It’s just a car,” he said. “It’s not the same as a house—it’s not the same as rebuilding again.”
Back at the Turtle Landing, Evans said that despite her soaked restaurant and more difficulty on the horizon, she was fighting to keep her spirits up as well, since she had no plans to leave Pearlington.
“I’m going to try to stick it out because I got six years into it, and life savings. I can’t really just walk away from it right now,” she said.
Locklins estimated it would take about two more years to get Pearlington back to normal once and for all. Meanwhile, he’s also attempting to plant a Foursquare church there.
He said volunteer teams serving Pearlington through EM helped speed the recovery process along this year and enriched local youth—including his daughters—by giving exposing them to people from all over the country.
“We had a positive experience with all the groups. The kids had a ball, and we got a lot done. We worked on so many houses, it was scary,” he said.
Experience Mission is offering Summer 2009 mission trips to Pearlington and other locations in the U.S. and abroad. Visit www.experiencemission.org or call 360-732-0986 to learn more.
