As recovery lags in Gulf, spirits sag, too

When he peered out of his FEMA trailer at the frame of a new house in his front yard, Tony Dixon didn't see, as others might, a symbol of progress on the battered Mississippi coast.

Instead, Mr. Dixon claims, the frame became a taunt – a daily reminder that "corrupt" recovery coordinators kept diverting building supplies from his project to rebuild homes for their buddies. The former firefighter says his frustration boiled over one day last month in a bizarre one-man protest: He used his truck to yank the wood frame off its pilings and then set fire to the rubble, standing off with police until the flames died down.

"Normally I'm an easygoing person, but it got to where I just said, 'Enough of this mess,' " says Dixon.

Officials deny any conspiracy to sideline the project, and Dixon now faces arson charges. But his bonfire suggests that hope and patience are wearing thin for some Katrina survivors on the Mississippi coast, where promising starts and glimmers of normalcy are dogged by slow federal relief, waning volunteerism, and even the quirks of residents themselves.

"There's a growing gap between the ones who have been on the road to recovery and a significant group – perhaps 20 to 30 percent – who don't see the light at the end of the tunnel," says Ray Scurfield, director of the Katrina Research Center at the University of Southern Mississippi in Long Beach. Lack of progress compared with others, he adds, is "becoming more unsettling to the group that still feels stuck."

Here in Pearlington, called Katrina's "forgotten town" by many familiar with its plight, as many as one-third of the storm's survivors are experiencing a dull sense of despair, experts say. For them, signs of progress elsewhere only add to a feeling of isolation.

By some measures, coastal Mississippi's recovery is coming along. The state has sped things along by opting to send checks directly to survivors, instead of requiring the submittal of communitywide plans for large-scale aid, as Louisiana has done. Mississippi so far has distributed $958.2 million to 26,500 storm-wrecked households located above the flood zone. Up the beach in Biloxi, the casinos have led a surging boardwalk revival. When the battered Bay Bridge between Bay St. Louis and Pass Christian reopened in May, months ahead of schedule, locals like Chuck Breath conceded he'd never seen "a chunk of concrete look so beautiful."

Uninsured in low-lying Pearlington

But for at least 7,000 uninsured Mississippi households in tucked-away spots like Pearlington – one of the poorest towns in one of the poorest states – precious little has been put back the way it was.

Pearlington, prestorm population 1,500, remains a sleepy haven of retirees, military veterans, working-class families, and others who could afford to buy a plot in the bottomlands and a small house, but not always the flood insurance. In such places, where elevation is barely above sea level, government red tape and natives not keen on changing their building standards have slowed the recovery to a crawl.

"A lot of these people ... don't know any other lifestyle. They live day to day in self-reliance, and part of that is to throw caution to the wind and hope everything is going to be OK," says Tom Dalessandri, an emergency management coordinator from Carbondale, Colo., who has worked extensively in Pearlington.

In part because Pearlington is a remote and unincorporated part of the county, residents here waited four days for rescue crews after the storm. Likewise, it is playing catch-up in the broader recovery.

Residents who did have insurance often took paltry settlements – averaging about $15,000 – to pay back storm debts. The post office washed away, and some residents still travel nearly 40 miles round trip each day to retrieve mail in Bay St. Louis, Miss.

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