Rebuiling Biloxi After Hurricane Katrina

Burning Man Artists Repair Budhist Temple

January 7, 2006., 4 months after Hurricane Katrina had razed the region, every mile approaching the looming grey shell of a city was an abandoned landscape of increasing destruction.

The scene was apocalyptic: Neon sign skeletons, their colored plastic skins blown away; boat-strewn lakeshores and fields; forests of trees stripped clean of their last speck of greenery, pine trunks randomly severed at their thick middles, like brittle garden stakes overrun by some invasive, endless herd.

From the consistent southward compass points of the snapped timbers, it wasn't difficult to read the last prevailing direction of hard winds. The hurricane came from the Gulf of Mexico, where increasingly warm waters had boiled the storm into its ferocious category 5 climax.

Snapped trees as a result of the storm's huge spiraling arms played rotational havoc as they swept across the multi-state region, first long and hard one direction, then wrapping around the other way, to finish the insult.

In Biloxi, Mississippi, Katrina's storm force hit hardest, though it was well east of highly-publicized New Orleans. A nationwide group of Burning Man Art Festival participants who had begun camping there since shortly after the storm had gathered to rebuild the Vietnamese Buddhist Temple, the grounds on which they had established a somewhat elaborate camp and infrastructure, including tent office, gourmet kitchen, and a donated 40-foot geodesic dome.

As cruel fate would have it, following decades of saving and years of building, this temple had opened and was officially dedicated exactly one day before Katrina hit, quickly filling it will 10+ feet of water. In the earliest post-storm days, the group offered immediate-needs support to the marginalized, mostly immigrant Vietnamese community, often even thinner on resources than others stuck in the disaster zone.

There was some hidden symmetry and logic to their presence there. Burning Man annually builds (then ceremoniously burns down) a large temple at the late summer arts festival. It was during the 2005 festival when Katrina hit. So directly following the event, it was members of this Burning Man group who initially committed their bodies and heavy equipment to the region in general.

Due to their collective experience with experimental gift economy, not to mention building and dismantling a 40,000 populated temporary city out in the middle of the Nevada desert every year, they were well-accustomed to self-sustenance where there was no existing infrastructure.

The Buddhist temple sits just a few blocks in from the white sand beachfront, and a few blocks from the end of the peninsula which makes up east Biloxi, surrounded by water on three sides. The high storm surge rushed in, across, and back out over this range, as if it were a river bed.

A wide variety of rejected/slightly defective wheelchairs were cleverly re-appropriated as dynamic campfire seating, allowing for effortless heat range adjustment, as well as acrobatic exploration and spontaneous contests, which were the nightly norm. Throughout our stay in the region, many visitors would later confess similar mis-impressions on passing through our camp for the first time; they were truly astounded with a group that did so much hard work while having so many physical disabilities!

It seemed almost callous at first, how cheerfully everyone moved through the post-Armageddon surroundings. The corner of an unseated house still stabbed through the garden fence into the edge of a replenished temple garden. It was referred to it as "Dorothy's house" from The Wizard of Oz.

Locals found a way to float through the endless destruction, utilize the wide-open landscape of otherwise wasted material wherever possible, and increases in self-medication, post-traumatic-stress and tripled suicide rates not withstanding, what were the alternatives?

The deadline for completion of the temple had been set for the fast-approaching Tet ceremonies on January 22, the all-important Vietnamese New Year. Each work morning, six to seven days a week, began with a work camp meeting around a whiteboard covered with evolving lists of volunteer projects. This system offered task consistency as one desired, or a great cycle of variety for the attention-challenged among the crew.

The Burners Without Borders crew developed skills - operating tractors and chainsaws, home construction, swamp-dredging, recovering boats from places they shouldn't be, clearing home wreckage, preparing space for FEMA trailers and rebuilding.

The finishing touches to the Buddha statue himself - sanding, repairing the gold leaf on his gown, completing some paint and sculptural details to his large lotus platform - were applied to his huge, heavy, hollow fiberglass form.

He had floated about in the ten feet of interior water during the storm and ended up face down, having taken a moderate beating for it. A video was shot from the rafters of the temple during the storm, detailing his journey and battle scars.

Finding any item in a place or form preserved enough to return to the owner was a highlight beyond any other. It was a strange and often awkward to follow the tractors in search of mismatched baby shoes and toys, private boxes from the backs of closets., holiday decorations, and Billy the Bigmouth Bass singing fish wall hangings.

By Tet and temple completion, the team left Biloxi for more needy pastures 30 miles east of New Orleans and50 miles west of Biloxi, a rural, unincorporated, under-represented Pearlington, Mississipi.