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Room with a view

This is the view I woke up to this morning. We stayed overnight in Biloxi, Miss. at the Isle of Capri. We got in late so it was mostly dark except for this building on the eastern tip of this town.

I had seen all of NBC’s reporting out of Biloxi, including Brian’s trip here, but because it was so dark I couldn’t appreciate any of it, until of course we came across a National Guard roadblock. It reminded me of how often I had passed through one of those in New Orleans throughout September. When we followed their directions, however, we realized we would not be able to get to our hotel. Every road leading to it was blocked. We could see the lit structure from every angle -- we just couldn’t get there!

So we headed back through to the Guard pass and went on across -- the only road to the farthest point at the tip of Biloxi. It’s mostly gutted in the lobby but the rooms are clean and accommodating -- a sharp departure from what you see out the window when you wake up in the morning. As morning light often does, it brought the harsh light of reality to this place... houses completely demolished and barges clearly not in the right spot –- that was my scenic view.

Another view out my hotel window

We head out today to a few less traveled parts of western Mississippi, to an area called Long Beach and some towns across the bay. My producing partner out here, Doug Stoddard, and his fearless crew Todd Williams and Mike Concepcion, who we linked up with again last night, are going to head up to Pine Country in Washington Parish, La., just on the border with Mississippi. They’ll give us a read on what Martin hopes to report on Thursday. The eye traveled right over that area, and as we have learned, just because it wasn’t on the coast doesn’t mean it wasn’t impacted.

Time to meet the guys downstairs and head out.

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Keeping the faith

I am standing here on top of layers of debris watching Martin shoot his standup at a destroyed Catholic elementary school. What was once a classroom is now an open air junkyard. The sisters in charge are jumping through hoops to keep some normalcy in these kids' lives. I met the pastor when he came out to see what we were up to. He is mighty concerned about the number of parishes affected in the Diocese of Biloxi. It will be a long time before they can rebuild. You'll see more tonight in our story.

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Meet Team East

Martin composes his script in the car after a whirlwind tour of Alabama.

As the team here discovers the joys of blogging, we wanted to introduce ourselves. You've met correspondent Martin Savidge... helping him get on the air every night are cameraman Brad Houston, soundman Mike Huntting and myself. But that's only part of the team, located east of New Orleans and traveling west. The other part of the team is one day in advance of us, tracking down elements and scouting locations for our next shoot. You will see and hear from them soon. 

Just as today is sure to be, yesterday was a flurry of phone calls, driving, shooting interviews, driving, eating lunch, driving, shooting more tape, writing a script, driving and then finally screening, feeding and tracking. When you were watching the final product on TV, we were on the road driving again. 

Blogging from the field would be a whole lot harder without a BlackBerry.

Martin's blog postings did our Monday justice (read the first one here, then click Next Post to read others), as we discovered Alabama’s important involvement in the Katrina recovery effort. We decided Monday night over dinner to share a few photos Brad and I took that you'll never see on Nightly News.

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