MARCH 19, 2006

PASS CHRISTIAN, MS -- More than six months after Hurricane Katrina ripped through Louisiana and Mississippi, devastation still grips the coast.

These pictures, taken around noon today, are similar -- but a little different -- from the earlier photos in New Orleans. They're the same because of the destruction that permeates. They're different because of the trees. Just about everywhere you look, you see trash-filled trees.

As in New Orleans, people are recovering -- houses are being rebuilt, people are buried in cemeteries, cafes serve food. But what's happened -- and is still happening -- here is truly numbing.

-- Andy Brack, president, Center for a Better South.

Trash is piled all over the place.

These steps were in the middle of an area that looks like it had been cleared -- either by nature or humans.

This note was on top of the steps above.

You can see a table and chairs on the foundation of a house. Across the street is the Gulf of Mexico.

Two blocks from the beach in Pass Christian.

The top of this house must have gotten completely ripped off.

A boat in the middle of a pile of trees about a mile from the ocean.

Several homes and buildings have spray-painted signs with instructions.

This tattered house is about four miles away from the Gulf.

Trash remains strewn through trees and litters the woods.

All over the place, trees are angled away from vertical.

In the middle of the devastation near the beach, a funeral tent covers a new grave.