Biloxi, Miss. – In the poorest of neighborhoods here, people sleep outside with no running water or power. They live among starving cats, rotting heaps of garbage and constant, buzzing flies. The bathroom is anywhere and everywhere. The filth is inescapable.
Weeks after Hurricane Katrina destroyed their homes and jobs, many people in east Biloxi are living amid the rubble of their own houses, waiting for the Federal Emergency Management Agency to deliver the trailers they have applied for – or for other federal assistance.
“We just wait and pray,” said Kenneth Albus, 45, who has spent weeks in the wreckage of his rented house, taking care of friend Margaret Nevels, a 65-year-old woman with swollen ankles and a heart condition.
People subsisting in similar squalid conditions can be found all over east Biloxi, this city’s version of the lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans and only blocks behind the wealthy casinos that lined the coast.
Those interviewed – black, white and Vietnamese – feel that FEMA has forgotten them. Nobody cares about the poor, they say. Never did, never will. Katrina didn’t kill them, but they fear the coming weeks might.
“We’re alive now, and we want to stay that way,” 81-year-old Bessie Tanksley said.
FEMA says it hasn’t abandoned Biloxi’s destitute and has already provided $465 million in housing assistance in Mississippi.
Jess Seigal, a FEMA spokesman in Biloxi, acknowledged that it’s difficult to find temporary housing on the coast and that many people are reluctant to leave what remains of their homes.
But “the folks sitting in their front yards don’t have to stay there,” he said.
FEMA is trying to get trailers to everyone and knows people are frustrated. Seigal said 3,915 units have been delivered to the six southern counties in Mississippi, including Harrison, where Biloxi sits.
He estimates the state will need a total of 30,000 units. He didn’t know how many would be required in Biloxi. FEMA was trying to distribute 500 a day.
“We’re not there yet,” he said.
After Hurricane Katrina ravaged their little white house of 20 years, Mike Hardy and his wife lived outside on their broken, warped porch – next to piles of stinking debris and the massive tree that fell.
Their living quarters were next to a dirty commode strapped underneath a metal walker. “That’s our bathroom,” Hardy said.
About a week ago, Hardy and his wife, Donna, decided to move a few feet away and joined some other friends and family who had set up tents. Their porch had become intolerable.
“Who can sleep there?” Hardy asked. “There are rats, snakes.”
