Photo du Jour: Bay St. Louis KTMB + 66

The remains of a Bay St. Louis residence overlooking the bay. Nearly all structures within minimally 500 yards of the water now look like this.

I made it over to the Mississippi Gulf Coast yesterday to Diamondhead, Bay St. Louis, and Perlington. According to a Diamondhead resident, over 400 houses at Diamondhead were destroyed by the 25+ foot storm surge of Bay St. Louis and the Jourdan River. The Mississippi Gulf Coast includes three counties and runs along Mississippi Sound from Perlington (the mouth of the Pearl River) to Pascagoula--a distance of approximately 90 miles. Virtually all built structures adjacent to these 90 miles of coastline received catastrophic damage from the storm surge. As noted in an earlier post, the difference between the damage within the City of New Orleans and the "Coast" and Slidell and Lower Plaquemines Parish is strikingly different. In most cases in NOLA, buildings remain. In the coastal areas, many buildings are completely obliterated. The destruction of KTMB took a different form, but the end result is the same.