My brother's house near Gulfport reported gone

[barondave]

My brother, sister-in-law and nephew are fine, comes a second hand report, but they say their house and both cars are completely gone. They live in Pass Christian, a mostly bedroom community between Gulfport and Bay St. Louis. I'll pass on more details when I know them.

I was down there just a few weeks ago. My brother made a decision -- really two -- that was very wise: He digitized all his pictures. After he loaded the CDs into his computer, he gave half of them (17) to me and was going to give half to our other brother. For safe keeping. *whew*

Slowly, I've been adding the pictures to my computer with the long-range goal of taking them and burning a DVD; probably just one will hold all the pics. I'll make several copies and give them to various family members. Now, of course, the project is a bit more short-range, though simply knowing the pictures are safe makes them low priority.

According to the news reports, all the casinos (which are on boats because of the gambling laws) are gone. We went to a couple of them; one for brunch and the other just to see it. I'm glad I insisted on doing touristy stuff, like walking into the Gulf, going shrimping and seeing a dolphin show. It'll be a while until such attractions are back to normal.

Comments

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

Is this the brother who was a guest at Minicon? Either way, I am sorry to hear this.

K.

[von-krag.livejournal.com]

Dave this makes me so glad to hear, it's a good idea for families and such.
BTW I've never done that stuff. I moved up here before it got hugely touristy and since then have just gone to NOLa. I'm a tourist at heart I expect I'd like the dolphins and such.

[chirosinger.livejournal.com]

I'm glad to hear that the family is safe. And the pictures are a happy thing. I'm sorry to hear about thier loss though. Hopefully you'll hear from them soon.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

I'm glad your brother and his family are safe, and sorry for all their losses.

My brother and I have started the project of getting our family pictures into the computer and onto at least CDs.

[barondave.livejournal.com]

Joe was the one who came to Minicon that year (pic of Joe Romm at the 1990 Minicon (http://www.romm.org/Pictures/Joe_Minicon_25.jpg)), Dan is the one in Mississippi ( l-r: Dan, Joe, Ethel & Dave 9/04 (http://www.romm.org/Anne_Funeral0904pics/27.html")). I didn't want to bring a camera through airport security, plus it was in the shop anyway, and now I regret not taking pictures.

[barondave.livejournal.com]

The place is rather laid back, and it's easy just to hang out at home, but I had a bit of wanderlust. We drove to or past many places that initial news reports say are gone or damaged. We walked/jogged down Scenic Drive in Gulfport, with fancy not-quite-Antebellum houses, a highway and a median strip away from the ocean. Probably gone. Near the Jefferson Davis house, iirc, which was farther away from the water and is reported heavily damaged.

The West Coast is odd because the ocean is in the wrong place. The sun is supposed to rise over the ocean, but over there the sun sets over the ocean. The Gulf Coast is odd because the sun isn't there at all. It simply gets dark or light, like everything else, and the sun isn't a factor. It's just so weird; I didn't even grow up on the ocean and I've lived in the middle of the country for more than half my life, but darkness over the ocean just as darkness over the land seems unnatural.

[barondave.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I'll probably make a on-line album of some of their pics (they said it was okay). I'll hear from them in time, so it might take a while for full news to percolate down. Usually, they'd send an e-mail to family and friends with any major updates, but that won't happen right away...

[barondave.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the thoughts. My brother got all his pictures transfered at Wal-Mart for comparatively cheap. I don't want to encourage that particular store (though credit where credit is due) and several places are set up for this sort of thing. But yeah, get the pictures transfered. I've been doing that with my photographs by scanning them. I've done more than half, but now I need to edit them down. I'm sure my scans aren't as good as the pros (dunno if they start with the negatives; I doubt it, but it's possible to do) but at least I have them.

It's frightening to think that if everything were gone, my main backup for memories are my websites. A tad comforting, too. They're low-res pictures and I don't have them all posted, but this is one of the reasons I'm putting them online and spending the time to annotate the pictures.

I should make another gallery or two...

[skylarker.livejournal.com]

I'm glad they are safe, and that they saved the pictures. I hope they had good insurance coverage for home and cars. Are they planning to stay in the same area?