The devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina in Mobile is visible by the piles of trash in Mobile at the side of streets all over town.

The city of Mobile has announced that there will be three special trash pick-ups for Hurricane Katrina refuse. You are required to divide your hurricane trash into three different categories: branches and limbs, building materials and potentially hazardous materials. The rubbish must be placed at the edge of the street on the right-of-way, since the contractors will not pick up anything left on private property. At a meeting the other night someone asked how he could get something off his property that had been deposited by the hurricane – something he could not move himself.

Along our road each of the five houses where we live has its own pile of hurricane debris. Our pile is about half of the stuff we had that got wrecked, mostly building material but also power tools, etc. Monica’s uncle and aunt lost just about everything, so their pile will be the biggest on the block.

The path of Katrina’s devastation is in direct proportion to the size of the piles of refuse – the farther you get from where Katrina made landfall, the smaller the piles. On the Mississippi Gulf Coast, the refuse piles will be huge, once they get around to collecting all the debris.