Bay St. Louis, MS

When we were in the area in June, 2006 the only way to get to Bay St. Louis was to go north to Interstate 10 westward and then come south since the Bay St. Louis bridge was heavily damaged (see pictures below). Bay St. Louis and nearby Waveland suffered extreme damage since they were two communities on the east side of Hurricane Katrina which is the worst part of the storm. Recovery is slowly, but steadily ongoing.

You can see how much erosion was caused by the storm surge. Their used to be a road running along the beach that existed pre-Katrina that would have been to the right of the photo.

This is just an example of the damage to homes in Bay St. Louis. No home escaped damage or destruction from the hurricane.

This is the Fire Dog Saloon which was a local landmark. Although the building was strong enough not to be washed away by the storm surge, the water and wind caused massive damage. I received word from the owner of the Fire Dog Saloon that Jimmy Buffett made the video for "Bama Breeze" at the damaged saloon.

One of the firedogs keeping watch over the saloon.

You just never know what you will discover. Who would have expected a Rolls Royce parked in front of a FEMA trailer. Turns out there's some stories behind this and I didn't even know it when I took this photo that I had a personal connection with the automobile. If you're curious, you can read about it on my blog.

As I mentioned at the top of this page, the Bay St. Louis Bridge was heavily damaged which made it impassable. The following pictures are of the bridge, the first set consisting of the east end as close as we could get at the road closure and the second set consisting of the west end of the bridge which can be seen from the beach road.

This bank building is solidly built and didn’t appear to have much obvious exterior damage from my vantage point. However due to the railroad tracks being blocked at the remains of Beach Boulevard and partially eroded away in front of the bank building, I had to make due taking a photograph from some distance.

This building used to be the home of Landmark Tile in Bay St. Louis. They were still in business when I took this photo, but forced to move to another location (as indicated by the sign on the right) due to the damage suffered by the building.

This old oak tree made it through the storm relatively intact. Its location is less than a mile inland in Bay St. Louis.

One of the first things we drove by was this statue of the Virgin Mary sitting on the steps leading to a damaged Catholic church. Now I don’t know for certain if this statue was originally intended to be at this location or if it was moved here post-Katrina, but it’s still an interesting site to see driving into town.

All along the Mississippi Gulf Coast I saw many signs similar to this one warning prospective beachgoers not to go into the water due to hidden debris below the water’s surface. Even though city and county officials now have the beaches cleaned up well enough, they cannot be sure the waters are safe at this time. Only a handful of places were deemed safe to swim while Nancy and I were visiting.

This photograph shows something that is a mystery to me. This appears to be some sort of homemade monument. It could be to a relief worker who died as a result of Hurricane Katrina. It might be a monument to relief workers in general as way of saying “thank you.” It could be something else entirely. I just don’t know. Anyone reading this have any information?

Now this is another mystery for me. What the heck is an old 60’s era television station van doing in Bay St. Louis? Is one of the residents a collector of television station memorabilia and restored this to original form? Could it be a prop from some movie long ago and someone owns it as a collectible? Did I enter the Twilight Zone? Who knows? If someone does know, please email me. I've done plenty of research online and found absolutely no record of a KTBX-TV Channel 15 station corresponding to this van nor any "AIF Productions" (seen on the rear of the van). Furthermore, the lack of a network logo of any kind on the van leads me to believe that this may have actually been a prop for a TV show or movie and that someone in Bay St. Louis collected it and maintained it.
 

A bonus photo: when my wife and I visited her parents in Biloxi during the Christmas 2006 holidays, we took a day to drive around to see how rebuilding was going. Over in Bay St. Louis, someone had a bench swing attached to what remained of a huge old oak tree and decorated it in the Christmas spirit.