Mississippi's Invisible Coast

What follows is an old article from the Sun Herald out of Biloxi MS.

As you may or may not know, I am from the Gulf Coast of Mississippi. Media coverage for that area has all but ended and I can tell you first hand that the devastation and the need for help is still quite desperate. Please take a few minutes to read this. Once you have, if nothing else, please think of these people and say a short prayer for them while you are celebrating the holidays with your family and friends. (you can find this article at www.sunhearld.com )

SUN HERALD EDITORIAL MISSISSIPPI'S INVISIBLE COAST

As Aug. 29 recedes into the conscious time of many Americans, the great storm that devastated 70 miles of Mississippi's Coast, destroying the homes and lives of hundreds of thousands, fades into a black hole of media obscurity.

Never mind that, if taken alone, the destruction in Mississippi would represent the single greatest natural disaster in 229 years of American history. The telling of Katrina by national media has created the illusion of the hurricane's impact on our Coast as something of a footnote.

The awful tragedy that befell New Orleans as a consequence of levee failures at the time of Katrina, likewise, taken by itself, also represents a monumental natural disaster. But, of course, the devastation there, and here, were not separate events, but one, wrought by the Aug. 29 storm.

There is no question that the New Orleans story, like ours, is a compelling, ongoing saga as its brave people seek to reclaim those parts of the city lost to the floods.

But it becomes more and more obvious that to national media, New Orleans is THE story - to the extent that if the Mississippi Coast is mentioned at all it is often in an add-on paragraph that mentions "and the Gulf Coast" or "and Mississippi and Alabama."The television trucks and satellite dishes that were seen here in the early days have all but disappeared.

While there has been no study to quantify the amount of coverage accorded to the plight of so many here or in New Orleans, it is obvious to any observer that the number of news stories on New Orleans is many times that of those focused on Mississippi.

So, why does that matter? It matters first as it relates to journalism's obligations to cover human beings whose conditions are as dire as those that exist here. The depth of the suffering and the height of the courage of South Mississippians is an incredible story that the American people must know. But, in the shadows of the New Orleans story, the Mississippi Coast has become invisible and forgotten to most Americans. Could it be possible that the ongoing story of an Alabama teenager missing in Aruba has received more coverage on some cable networks than all of the incredibly compelling stories of courage, loss and need of untold thousands of Mississippians? Maybe a lot more coverage?

The second reason that the coverage matters is in the realm of politics. If the American people and their elected representatives do not truly know the scope of the destruction here, and if they are not shown the ongoing conditions afflicting so many, then there are consequences which are playing out even this week in Washington, where Congress will act, or not act, to relieve the incredible pain that has reduced the condition of so many American citizens to Third World status or worse. If the people do not know, they cannot care. We believe if they are shown the extent of the devastation and the suffering, they and their representatives will respond. So the coverage matters. A lot.

The problem, to some extent, is that you have to be here and see it for yourself to comprehend the utter destruction that is so much like Berlin or Tokyo after World War II. We would like to invite our news colleagues from across the nation to come and view the Coast with us. It is impossible to comprehend this disaster from afar. A television can display only a single screen of the damage. When you have driven mile after mind-numbing mile and viewed the complete nothingness where cities and homes and businesses once stood, only then will you begin to understand what has happened here. Then you will begin to wonder, where are all the people who used to live on this beautiful shore? What has happened to their families and all of those shattered lives? That is when you will understand that the story of Katrina in South Mississippi isn't over, it has only begun.

On the third day after Katrina crushed us, this newspaper appealed to America: "Help us now," the headline implored. America answered with an outpouring of love and help. That response saved us then. Our plea to newspapers and television and radio and Web sites across the land is no less important today: Please, tell our story. Hear the voice of our people and tell it far and wide. We are here. Do not forsake us.We are no footnote.And one more thing... Thank you. To every out-of-state volunteer, to every friend and family member who has sent supplies or prayers, we sincerely thank you. And we ask that you do one more thing: Call your senators and your congressional representative and ask them to support additional aid for South Mississippi's recovery. We couldn't have gotten off our knees without you. But we can't get back on our feet without federal help.

Katrina's toll in Mississippi
$125 billion Estimated dollar amount of damage caused by Hurricane Katrina 231 Identified dead statewide
5 Unidentified dead 67 Missing
65,380 Houses in South Mississippi destroyed
383,700 Mississippi insurance claims filed (Katrina and Rita)
$5 billion Claims paid (as of Nov. 21)
141,000 Insurance claims filed in South Mississippi
$1.3 billion Claims paid in South Mississippi
44 million Estimated cubic yards of debris in South Mississippi
21.8 million Cubic yards removed as of Dec. 5
20,447 Red Cross staff and volunteers in Mississippi
5,543,006 Red Cross meals served
42,768 People sheltered by Red Cross
229 Red Cross shelters opened
$185 million Red Cross money spent in South Mississippi as of Nov. 30