In Jackson we were joined by another NPS archeologist, Roger Moore from Chaco Canyon, and Shelley Hight from U.S. Fish and Wildlife out of New England. Next we were assigned to the Corps of Engineers and fell under the authority of a young but capable Corps archeologist, Jennifer Winter. And off we all went to Biloxi, Mississippi which was to be our duty station for the duration of the tour. Midway through the detail Jennifer Winter returned home after a 2 months in Mississippi and we received another Corps Team Leader, Jim Wojtala out of Vicksberg; a highly experienced and able local archeologist. At the same time Shelley Hight had to return home and we got a welcome replacement from the NPS’s Southeast Archeological Center, Brinnen Carter; another expert in the local archeology.

What exactly was our job? Our role was as archeologists helping the Corps of Engineers meet environmental compliance requirements for Katrina response projects. Our main work centered on completing Section 106 investigations and reports for temporary group housing sites. These multiple housing sites, that range in size from between 10 to 100 acres, are being developed to provide temporary trailer homes to thousands of people displaced by Hurricane Katrina. We were also involved in providing archeological compliance for debris processing sites, schools and other public buildings, and debris removal. And you might ask why FEMA and the Corps are “wasting” their time doing environmental and historic preservation compliance in the midst of disaster response? They did it because Section 106 compliance is called for by law, but also because these agencies along with the State of Mississippi did not want to destroy the state’s past in the process of rebuilding. The work we did was simply speedy “triage”. Once we were done the Bechtel Corporation “trailer men” were quick on our heels. A parallel team to ours, assigned directly to FEMA, handled the preservation compliance for historic structures.

We were embedded with the Corps of Engineers in their local center of operations at Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi, Mississippi. The Corps of Engineers is the agency that is responsible for the temporary roofing program (the “blue roof “program [Mississippi has more blue tarps than Alaska], debris removal, temporary housing, and temporary public infrastructure support (schools, police stations, etc.). Crammed like everyone else into a few former Air Force class rooms we obtained offices that consisted of a chair and a 2-foot space to put our laptops. But the Corps of Engineers were a friendly, can-do outfit and we greatly enjoyed out stay there.

Like our brethren in the Corps we worked 12 hr days 6 days a week and 6 hours on Sunday followed by 6 hours of free time. Our main daily work consisted of placing archeological test pits in the ground in the search for hidden archeological sites that might be located in temporary housing sites or other development zones. Our projects were assigned by Peter Thomas, a FEMA senior archeologist in Jackson (a hero of patience and wisdom) with the Mississippi State Historic Preservation Officer. We only looked at the “archeologically sensitive” sites; other properties were “cleared” automatically. After a full day of archeological fieldwork we would return after dark to prepare reports to be sent to FEMA and the SHPO in Jackson.

Over the two months we dealt with prehistoric mounds and living sites as well as historic sites from the nineteenth century from Pascagoula to Bay St. Louis, and from the coastal beaches of Pass Christian to the hilly piney woods country around Picayune. Most of the work was hardly glamour archeology; rather it consisted of relentless test pitting, screening, record keeping, and report writing.

The damage along the Mississippi coast was huge. Much of the immediate coastal towns looked as if they had experienced the same fate as Hiroshima. Houses, cars, boats, trees, telephone poles, and the personal effects of thousands of people had all been churned up, spun around, and then had been redeposited in massive debris piles. By the time we left we saw much progress though much remains to be done. Many people now have individual FEMA trailers on what was once their house sites, those who did not own property are beginning to find temporary homes in the larger trailer parks, and massive amounts of debris have been removed. It will take years for the coast to fully recover, but progress is being made.