In the Path of Total Destruction

"It's like a treasure hunt—you keep going back, looking for more," says AFT member Marla Mauffray of post-Hurricane Katrina expeditions to her Long Beach, Miss., beachfront neighborhood to search for family belongings.

Marla Mauffray, with husband Bobby and two children, stand on what is left of their home—a concrete slab. (Photo by David Purdy)

Two crystal crosses are among the few possessions Mauffray, a fourth grade teacher at Thomas L. Reeves Elementary School and a member of the Long Beach Federation of Teachers, has recovered from her home—her neighborhood, actually. "Our stuff is not even on our property," she says. "It's to the north, the east, the west—and probably the south."

Like many coastal homes along the Gulf Coast, Mauffray's house was reduced to a slab of concrete by Hurricane Katrina's winds, which seemingly devoured most of the family's belongings, leaving only some dishes, a couple pieces of jewelry and those treasured crosses from her daughters' baptisms nearby.

Among the few possessions that survived the hurricane, says Mauffray, were these two crystal crosses from her daughters' baptisms. (Photo by David Purdy)

The railroad tracks in Long Beach, a community of nearly 20,000 residents sandwiched between Pass Christian and Gulfport, have become a border of sorts since the hurricane, marking the storm's path of destruction and underscoring the unpredictability of nature. "Pretty much everything south of the railroad is not livable," says Mauffray, whose home was south of the tracks—about 2,000 feet from the beach.

Although her family—husband Bobby and daughters Emma, 4, and Ryann, 2—have lost their house and nearly all their possessions, they have a roof over their heads. She and her family are living with her mother and stepfather about three miles north of the railroad tracks. Mauffray went back to work at Reeves in late September (students returned Oct. 3). Her husband, who works for UPS and is a member of the Teamsters, also is back on the job.

Mauffray has come back to her neighborhood just four times since returning from Columbus, Ga., where they evacuated to before the storm. "Knowing that I can never go back to that house" is difficult, she says, adding, "We brought both of our children home from the hospital to that house." [Kathy Walsh]