Just as an aside, I went to Mississippi post-Katrina with a ham radio team at the behest of the Salvation Army. This was about a week and a half afterwards. A few miles from the coast, gas stations were open and doing business, though they could not take credit cards. There was massive destruction of the telephone infrastructure, but by that time it was possible to make occasional cell phone calls. Very little was undamaged closer to the beach.
The Salvation Army canteen was located in a damaged strip mall. the grocery store had a hole in the roof. The owner was stripping out food gone bad, and initiated roof repairs while we were there. A pizza place in the strip mall reopened, with no credit card service and bottled water, soda in cans. While we could eat at the canteen, we were encouraged to eat at local businesses to help restart the local economy.
Incidentally, we were told that it took the state guard 3 days to clear the trees of the highways the southernmost 100 miles or so.
In the more rural areas, such as Perlington, MS, everything was still out.
Huge numbers of powerlines were down, and we drove over a lot of them. There were power crews on about every other street, and local power plants had big circus tents with hundreds of power crew trucks parked outside.
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John Beadles, N5OOM
Richardson, TX
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