Bay St. Louis, Mississippi

[dar512]

Very nice pictures and commentary, V. You've done a good thing.

By the way, the guy who writes and draws the Arlo and Janis comic strip lives just down the road from Bay St. Louis at Pass Christian. His web page has included a lot of pictures and personal information about what has been happening there. Arlo and Janis.

[BigV]

A brief aside--Thank you to all of you for your affirming comments. I do appreciate all the complimentary remarks. It is nice to be appreciated, and I have become uncomfortable leaving your compliments unacknowledged. So, Thank You!

[BigV]

Speaking of Pass Christian, I want to introduce you to Skip, The Painter, out of Vero Beach, Florida.

As you can tell from the pictures to this point, the ground is covered in debris. The roadways are mostly clear, but there is crap on the ground everywhere. This is not a good thing for tires in general. To make matters worse, the tire shops were were as destroyed as all the other businesses. I think I have a picture of the Goodyear store all boarded up somewhere.

Anyway, at the church, we had two trucks, and one had a flat tire. So, I bought some Fix-a-Flat and two cans later decided it was hopeless. We changed the tire and put the flat in the back of the van. Our assignment on Tuesday was to help clean out a home in Pass Christian, across the bay to the east of Bay Saint Louis. As we drove around the sound (since the Hwy 90 bridge was out), it became clear that the van had tire problems, too. It was getting pretty mushy in the rear and by the time we arrived in town, the right rear tire was very low. I will leave the attribution up to the reader, synchronicity, answered prayer, confirmation bias, whatever, but a couple of blocks from our work site I saw one of those signs along the road, but this one said "Tires plugged -- Car Wash". I choose to believe answered prayer, since it was the first we'd seen and we had one and a three quarters flat tires right now.

I dropped off the team, unloaded the gear and got back in the van with my two bad tires and backtracked to the sign. I found it, and headed toward the "Car Wash". It seemed like forever, and I did eventually give up. I saw someone pulling out of their driveway, and I pulled alongside them and asked "where was the car wash?" She said "About two blocks that way."

Sure enough. I limped in and Skip was helping another fellow with a flat tire. I waited patiently for my turn and I watched him fix the tire and check the plug and get $10 for his work. $10 was a good deal, considering the demand exceeded the supply. As he worked on the truck's flat, I asked him if he'd like me to take the tire off the van to be repaired. He surprised me by saying no. Oookay. Well, the truck flat was easy to identify, it was the panhead screw with the bubbles coming out, most likely.

Have you ever seen a tire plugged? The process is straightforward. Identify the leak and remove the cause if possible. Then a small cylindrical rasp on a T handle is used to rough up the inside surface of the hole. A couple of vigorous strokes with the file and the hole is prepped for the plug. Now another T handled tool is used to push the plug into the hole. Imagine a snake's tongue. The very tip of each of the two slender forks would lean toward each other and *just* touch. Now imagine it in tool steel, with a good sized T handle. The plug is inserted into the "eye" made by the two sides of the fork. The plug is about four inches long, and made of some reinforced feltlike material, about an eighth of an in cross section. The whole plug is saturated in a very gooey tarlike black rubber cement. When the plug is pulled halfway through the eye of the plugging tool then the tip is inserted into the prepared hole and you press and twist and push the plug into the hole. It is awkward work, especially because in this case, the screw made a hole in the tire at a low oblique angle to the tread surface, not perpendicular to the tread. So when Skip pushed the plug in the hole, the tire had a tendency to roll. Together we blocked the tire from rolling and he pushed the plug home. The trick is to push it in far enough to expand on the pressurized inside of the tire, like a rivet expands on the inside of the surface to be joined. Here's where the snake-tongue tool shines. Once placed to the proper depth, which leaves about an inch or less protruding above the tread, the tool is pulled out. Since the plug was "threaded" through the eye and the eye is open at the farthest end, the tool comes out, with the tips of the fork separating and leaving the plug behind!

Actually, this whole process is like riveting with rubber and gooey felt, but if you don't know riveting, that's no help. Once in place, the plug is tested in the soapy water bath. If airtight, the exposed plug ends are cut flush with the tread, and off you go.

I mentioned I didn't expect Skip's answer to keep the tire on the van, and now he showed me why. He asked me to gently and carefully roll the van forward, as he swept his hands and eyes over the tread, searching for the source of the leak. He intended to install the plug with the tire on the vehicle. That certainly would make the process of stopping the tire from rolling much easier. Alas, he could not locate the source of the leak. So, he changed his air chuck for an impact wrench at the end of his air hose and took the wheel off. It turns out that the rental van's tire had a problem on the inside sidewall. The leak was obvious--it was a plug just like the one I watched him install on the truck's flat tire! When he pulled it out with some pliers, the plug was less than an inch long. He said the reason why I had this leak is that the previous repair guy was trying to stretch the plugs by cutting them in half, effectively doubling his inventory of plugs. Except there wasn't enough plug on the inside of the tire to stay put. Skip shook his head and called it shoddy work.

Now Skip looked like he'd been camped at the (non-functioning) carwash for a couple of weeks, kinda dirty and amateurish. He had his compressor and generator tied to a sheet of plywood on top of his Jeep, for crying out loud. But even though he didn't look like Mr Goodwrench, his manner and work and results were completely professional. This was one good ol' boy who knew how to Git 'er done!

We talked for about twenty minutes about a range of topics. He told me about how he'd come here from Waveland where he'd repaired scores of tires. The local Pass Christian police had come by earlier in the day and asked him where his permit and license were. I was astonished. He said he told them that he was performing a valuable service and that if they wanted to, they could escort him to the city limits and he'd go somewhere else and be appreciated. The cops left him in peace.

I want to give him a (delayed) professional recommendation of the highest form. He was upright and personable, effective, safe and fair. In fact, he tried not to take my money. I forced it on him, seriously. Thank you Skip, for your service, both to tires and to people. You're very much appreciated. Your effort enabled my team to help several families. I offer you my thanks and theirs.

[BigV]

Time for another change of pace. dar512's link to Arlo and Janis is by itself highly worthy of repeating, but it also reminded me that I have collected a few links in the interim. Here they are to this point, with a brief description for each.

This blog was created by UPC team members who went ahead of me. I know these people, I worked and ate and slept and prayed alongside many of them.

This article features Sam Thompson, the site coordinator at First Presbyterian Church in Bay Saint Louis. This dude rocks. I would work for him again in a heartbeat. He basically runs the operation at the church, from soup to nuts. I worked alongside him, briefed with him, ate with him. I was moving some debris at one site with rakes and snow shovels, and I could not keep up with him. Captain Cardio, he made the whole pile move, he made Lance Armstrong look like a couch potato.

This site shows a map of Bay Saint Louis. It is covered with little squares each of which represents a squarish aerial photograph of the surface. The pictures were taken shortly after the storm. I was able to navigate my way through the overhead shots and orient myself. I found the church and I can locate many of the pictures I took on the map or on a picture from the map. If you have any questions, ask me. I can probably locate a given picture. I may even do a "tour" and mark up one of the large pictures.

Speaking of tours, this is the place I got the idea from. I drove many of these streets looking for Skip. I will post the pictures taken from ground level next.

Here are some links to videos taken by people caught in the storm. This one is taken from the Beau Rivage in Biloxi. It's ten minutes long and drags in places, but really shows the change in the amount of water from before to after. Good visuals on high wind speeds too.

This one is much shorter, about two and half minutes, and has been edited a lot more tightly. Very dramatic, even though I know it was taken in Gulfport Beach, MS, I felt like I was on the Titanic, the way the water rushed in. Watch it.

This one is much longer, about 30 minutes, and highly produced. A broadcast television program, to be precise. Long, but good.

Kind of a hodgepodge of links, info, pictures, etc, but the pictures more than make up in content what they lack in professionalism.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Plugging tires ain't rocket science but for the couple of right ways there is 1900 wrong ways. Glad you got a man that knew what he was doing.

I can understand him not wanting to take your money. I sure you were the best entertainment he's had in weeks.

[BigV]

A few shots of Pass Christian. I took both these pictures of these houses from the same spot. They are on opposite sides of the street, as you can probably tell from the fact that one is floated of it's foundation to the rear and the other is floated off to the front.

[BigV]

Much trash had already been moved to the street.

[BigV]

City Hall and the Village. These tents were serious construction, with wood frames and raised floors. I had a few meals in the white chow tents in the background.

[BigV]

The spit shine interior of one of the tents. And a picture of a mobile shower unit--eight hot showers in a speciality trailer.

[BigV]

Look at this house, off it's foundation. It is a big house and that foundation is about four feet high, maybe more. What happens next in this kind of situation?

As for the train tracks, I have no explanation as to the presence of the razor wire. Suggestions?

[busterb]

10 bucks for repair is not a rip-off, Here the AH's get 8.50 Great job BV

[glatt]

This is a good thread BigV. Thanks for sharing your story.

[xoxoxoBruce]

The razor wire is probably to keep critters off the tracks.

[plthijinx]

Big, your heart is WAY bigger than you even realize. i've seen this from the air, doing my part up there, but dayum dude. you've put reality in my eyes. i'm almost speechless. it's one thing to see it from the air, but to be there and smell and experience the atmosphere. outstanding man.

[MVM]

BigV, thank you for the good video links. I had seen some of those, but with awful music in the background instead of the sound of the storm.

The razor wire is supposed to keep people from going south of the tracks, where the most devastation occurred, for their own safety (broken gas pipes, downed power lines, broken water mains, etc - I have the phone numbers programmed in my cell phone), and for the convenience of the debris removal crews. It is also supposed to help keep out looters, but it didn't do a particularly good job of that. There are breaks in the wire at checkpoint where you have to show a pass to go any further. Residents who have a house in the area can get a pass.

There are some ways to get around the checkpoints, and locals have been finding them so they can go south of the tracks to see the devastation. They are basically angry that they have been kept out and have not been able to see what happened.

They finally picked up the refrigerators on my mother's street. I don't know what would have happened if we would have had to clean them out! I still think about what you must have gone through doing that!