Day 3: Orientation and first assignments

Our HQ is the Mississippi Center for Justice in Biloxi. We drove down on US 90, but then had to detour north to I-10 because the bridge for 90 is out (I might have some pics later...). The damage in this area is severe, even months later. It looks like F3 damage on the Fujita scale. The beachfront homes are essentially all destroyed, although a few sturdy structures remain. There is also significant damage moving inland among low-cost residences that could not take the wind and storm surge. The Casinos along the shore are about 50% intact, which is to say that the bottom floors are blown out, leaving the stuctural supports alone in place, and tha the top halves mostly have subtaintial damage to the roofs, with some collapsed walls. This is on average, some are slightly worse or better. Some are mostly repaired and operating (a good thing, since the casinos are apparently the best source for employment in this area). The local rebuilding priority appears to be clearing out the beaches of debris, so there is heavy equipment sifting through the sand. It seems like an odd priority, but I guess it's important so that the casinos can be rebuilt.


The priority for the MSCJ is to get the public aware of the emergency aid funding of the state. Apparently, MS got X$ in federal disaster relief money, of which 75% had to be spend on low-income families that had lost their homes; Congress later docked the cap to 50%. But, there was a provision in the act which allowed the state discretion to drop the caps "for substantial need" or something like that, so the governor has decided that the money will be spent regarless of income, and will only be eligible to homeowners who had homeowners insurance (but not hurricane/flood insurance) and who did not live on a floodplane. OK, I can understand holding back on the peope living on the floodplane, but the requirement that it only go to people who already had homes and could afford insurance is a bit crackheaded. This is a middle- and upper-class recovery bill now that is leaving the most vulnerable to rot. So, the "plan" is basicly to go out and get people to know that this is happening so they bitch to their reps and get the plan stopped before it's too late. They have until the end of the week. Yes, not a very good plan.


My assignment for the first day is unrelated, though. Our job is to head out to the local courthouses and find notices of property forclosures. We copy down the info and bug the tax recorders to give us the addresses of the people being foreclosed on. The idea is for US to mail them to let them know what's happening. Why us, you ask? Because in this state, all due process requires is a notice on the bullitin board and an add in a newspaper, so a lot of these folks probably have no idea. Also, there is a moratorium on foreclosures in MS right now, but in order to prevent it, the person being forclosed on has to file some documents--and they're going to have a hard time doing that if they don't know they're being foreclosed on! So, we identify who these people are, and then we try to get them the information they need to keep them in their homes.


I wasn't happy with the amount of work we got done today. It took us forever to find the first courthouse, in part due to our own disorganization, and in part due to incomprehensible directions. We eventually got there and got to work...copying detailed property descriptions through glass proved very frustrating. The lack of internet access while away from HQ didn't help; we thought it would be best to try the white pages before using the tax assessors, but the white pages were a bust so we didn't get the addresses. We'll leave that for tomorrow.

Jen and Nancy finished off the cooking supplies; I was sent off to get cheese and ziplocks and that's about all the good I was. =( A bunch of people went out at night to drink again, but again I didn't quite feel up to it again so I chilled with Nancy, sue (Kent), Jen, and Erin pretty much all night. We got a lot of scandalous gossip in, mostly about Terry and Freya (Columbia) who had apparently taken a walk to the beach (the part that had been sifted, I assume), then broke up the meeting and turned in.