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Army engineers clear streets after Katrina

By Spc. Chris Jones
September 9, 2005

WAVELAND, Miss. (Army News Service, Sept. 9, 2005) – After Hurricane Katrina, all but three houses on one block in the city of Waveland, Miss., were left in pieces, with rubble up to six feet high. The Army Corps of Engineers and National Guard were called in to help clear the streets of fallen trees, smashed cars and segments of houses.

Two engineers from the Arkansas National Guard, Staff Sgts. Henry Laxton and Bobby Farmer, have been operating bulldozers, sweeping roads off the Mississippi coast, to allow for transportation in an area that was near the center of Hurricane Katrina’s deadly path.

The streets of Waveland were temporary rivers during the storm, said Annie Singleton, who said her husband escaped the violent waves by kayaking down the street, with the family cat in his lap.

“All the debris was in the street, so nobody could really get to us for four or five days,” said Andrew McDonald, about after the flood waters subsided.

Farmer and Laxton, both members of the 875th Engineers Battalion out of Jonesboro, Ark., have been working doggedly since last week. Laxton said the job can be emotionally draining.

“Sometimes it gets to you,” Laxton said of working in the devastated city, constantly surrounded by citizens who have lost all their personal belongings and, sometimes, a loved one.

The job places Laxton and Farmer in extreme heat, with little time for rest and in conditions which offer constant distractions. Still, Laxton said he understood his job from the moment he arrived in the area, and the engineers in his unit have been working nonstop to make the streets of Waveland clear for transportation.

“We all knew right where to start, and we just got right into it,” Laxton said.

Singleton, who returned to her demolished home across from the McDonalds’ house, said the military’s presence in the relief effort has been indispensable.

“I love what the military is doing here,” she said. “The best part of my day is when I look up and see a helicopter, because I know that somebody’s going to help.”

(Editor’s note: Spc. Chris Jones serves with the 40th PAD.)