Percentages of licensed child care slots, by post-Hurricane Katrina status of centers, in Jackson County, Mississippi. (Rural Early Childhood Atlas) Click on graphic for larger view.

A clean-up worker at a Pascagoula child care center wore a mask yesterday for protection from dangerous mold. (Annjo Lemons) Click on photo for larger view.

A cross outside First Presbyterian Church in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, bears messages of hope, but the child care center in the church will need help to reopen. (Annjo Lemons) Click on photo for larger view.

The child care center inside United Methodist Church in Pascagoula appeared to be a total loss. (Annjo Lemons) Click on photo for larger view.

Infant cribs at the Ingalls Avenue Baptist Day Care Center in Pascagoula were salvageable, but the facility with 140 licensed child care slots was not. (Annjo Lemons) Click on photo for larger view.

Little House of Wonders in Pascagoula, where 24 children received care until Aug. 31, is probably a total loss because of water damage inside the building. (Annjo Lemons) Click on photo for larger view.

Report from Pascagoula: Storm Surge Washed Away 11% of Licensed Child Care Slots in One Mississippi County

SEPT. 16, 2005 | The Punkin Patch on Highway 613 in Moss Point, Mississippi, seemed like a safe place in the storm Aug. 31 for Marie Gandy and 19 other people who sought shelter there, but by the time Hurricane Katrina had roared past, water inside Gandy’s child care center was three feet deep.

The waves washed away the Punkin Patch’s 70 licensed child care slots and approximately 11 percent of all licensed slots in Jackson County, where many parents of young children help keep oil refineries, marine manufacturing, and chemical plants in operation. Another 46 percent of licensed slots in the county are at risk of elimination because of varying degrees of damage to centers. The estimate of lost and at-risk child care slots is from the Rural Early Childhood Atlas (see pie chart).

Katrina also eliminated jobs for Gandy’s 11 employees and the business that Gandy had operated for a quarter-century. Her insurance company told her that her policy would not cover the water damage to her building, and Gandy was left wishing she had invested the hundreds of dollars she paid in monthly premiums for 25 years. If she had, she mused yesterday, she would have had plenty of reserves to rebuild her center on her own.

Around the Gulf Coast region, the owners of 3,045 licensed child care centers could be in the same situation. That is the number of licensed centers in the counties declared eligible by the Federal Emergency Management Agency for assistance to rebuild public infrastructure:

Mississippi:  1,690 centers
Louisiana:        899 centers
Alabama:          456 centers

(Designation of a county does not insure that any particular facility will be eligible for assistance.)

In Mississippi, the centers have a total of 127,454 slots, according to a review of a May 2005 list of licensed centers in that state.

The Mississippi State University (MSU) Early Childhood Institute conducted a telephone and door-to-door survey of licensed child care providers in Jackson County this week, finding that Hurricane Katrina damaged approximately one-fourth of the county’s child care centers beyond repair, while another 39 percent are reopening but need repairs.

Cathy Grace and Annjo Lemons of MSU, with Amy Brandenstein of Chevron helping them navigate where road signs had blown away, drove more than a hundred miles around the county yesterday, passing huge mounds of debris, finding one child care center after another with doors flung wide—and no one inside. Leaves on the azaleas and live oaks that made the Gulf Coast region a land of almost mystical beauty have turned brown, perhaps from the saltwater spray of the ocean surge. In places, the odor from piles of garbage made breathing difficult.

At the LaFont Inn in Pascagoula, down on the coast, hotel employees kept iced tea glasses filled for law enforcement, rescue, and fire department workers who rested between shifts, and provided wireless Internet access for Grace and Lemons to transmit the photographs here. After filing these pictures, Grace and Lemons retired to a recreational vehicle parked at Chevron Pascagoula Refinery, where huge pilot lights shot flames into the night sky and Chevron workers were back on the job, no doubt worrying about their families’ futures in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.