BAYOU LA BATRE, Alabama — While driving around Bayou La Batre looking for shots and film footage to accompany our stories on the woes of the local shrimp fishing industry, we were struck by the decay and decline here.
Homes were crumbling and falling apart at the seams, with the occasional boat or car stranded in a garden or alongside the road. All set against a backdrop of a lush coastline and beautiful creeper-covered trees. Some of the area might look familiar to those who have seen the film “Forrest Gump,” parts of which were filmed here.
The occasional restaurant or business that has not been in business for many years, the empty building a testimony to a high water mark that this community reached some way back and which has never hit since.
Bayou La Batre is a town of some 2,700 people in Mobile County, Alabama. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the median household income here in 2007 was $37,575, more than 25 percent below the national median income of $50,740.
Some 20.8 percent of people in the county were below the poverty line in 2007, compared to the national average of 13 percent.
Particularly on a gray day, and it was gray while we were there just after tropical storm Ida, the homes abandoned many years ago that are gradually being overtaken by weeds and rotting in the damp salt air were sad to behold.
Photos by Carlos Barria
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For those of you who have ever driven through the back roads of France, these sights are quite common, and the average HHI is similar or even lower.
- Posted by MastersOfTrivia.comHey, welcome to the real United States. Not everyone can live in upscale suburbia or in a townhouse. It takes a long time to come back from a disaster. The government buildings are quickly rebuilt as Washington takes care of its own, but as for the farmer or worker just barely making it the rebuilding is slow or non existant. We needed to put the money spent on stimulus into new housing and small businesses rather than pouring it down the AIG or Wall Street rat holes.
- Posted by f belzWith major of the elected congressperson are more worried how to stuff their pocket to make them millionaire, than they are concern about the rural backwoods families who sweat, fought, and made this country. Congress is no better than the Wall Steeler or the AIG crooks, they only care from themselves. Don’t believe it? Wait until you see their health care package, they won’t have death committees to see who get treatment.
- Posted by MorrisBelz’s comment should be on the front page of Reuters where everybody can read it. Carlos Barria’s photographs are stunning. Very well done.
- Posted by AJ FranksBlame all these derivatives and their effect on America on BankersGreenspan, as aired on CBC TV Canada, the Passionate Eye series on Nov 15,00 at 8:00 PM
- Posted by HardyIt is sad to see. We are pouring money into companies that they claim are to big to fail. I thought they had rules about that, is that not why the forced Ma Bell to split up. I say let them fail, there are small firms out there doing a great job that can take over and spread the risk out even further. You hear about pay packages holding back talent. I say if there only in it for the money send them packing, they’re not the type of employee you want. You want someone that is in it for the journy, the challenges and wants to make a differnce.
- Posted by Terry GardnerYou see the decline in rural America, and elsewhere, because the individual can no longer make a living off of the land. He has been taxed off it, or driven off it by environmental over-regulation, or is a victim of economies of scale by expansive corporatist assimilation of real production. Fallow land means the individual is in trouble. In one generation, our people have effectively been removed from the land, and are dependent on others for their sustenance and prosperity.
- Posted by DennisI just wonder if the Congressional Representative of this godforsaken dreamland in Alabama is not one of the ones heehawing in Washington against health care reform and getting coverage for the poor folks.
Folks like these should get stimulus money directly to rebuild their homes. I doubt any insurance company would even look at these piles of tinder.
It’s a bad dream gone bad.
- Posted by Augustus DouwSadly this is nothing new. Have you ever traveled the back roads in Appalachia from West Virginia south? I’ve lived in this area all my life (I’m over 70) and there has never been a time that this wasn’t evident. It’s not good, but it’s not always bad. There are people whose families left the area long ago to seek a better way of life. These people simply walked away from poverty and into better lives where work was available and times were much better. Houses don’t usually get into this shape unless they have been neglected for many, many years. There is more than one side to every story!
- Posted by owronghey…’real america’! if you want ‘to come back from a disaster’ (the bushed administration), STOP voting republican! the new dixie-crat party has nothing new to offer anybody in any area. just think where you’d be right now, if the do-nothing dixie-crats had been in power and done nothing to shore-up the thieving banks. you’d be in a soup line holding an i.o.u. for your paycheck, that’s where! we either go forward from obama or back into the swamp. your choice!
- Posted by dr arpJust because the media presents images of a dilapidated house doesn’t mean that anyone actually lives in that house or that the whole community lives in abject poverty. I own farm land with two abandoned houses on it but it is not indicative of poverty on my part, nor the decendents of the previous occupants. While some folks could use some help, more could just use a job and a vibrant ecomnomy. Why not send the so-called stimulus money back to the taxpayer rather than provide some greedy or crooked neerdowell the opportunity to get wealthy whether they are on Wall Street, the Capitol steps or heading some NGO?
- Posted by BanjoIs it just me or does that house look like it’s been abandoned for at least 20 years?
- Posted by RichardI’ve lived in Alabama all my life. It’s obvious that these photographs do not relate directly to the present recession. Part of what is at work here is a shift toward aquaculture rather than fishing as a primary source of seafood in the market. This shift has been going on for quite some years. As fish farming is more efficient than wild fishing, marginaly profitable fishing and shrimping has been driven out of business. Some communities previously centered around fishing and shrimping naturally fall into decline - as there are few other employment opportunites in the area.
- Posted by PaulI agree with al of you! Yayks! Thats terrible..
- Posted by CrystalWell Hello - water lovers -
- Posted by gayleWhat did you think would happen when there is water water everywhere? You should have build a boat not a house! Were you insured $$.$$?
I grew up in Mobile, Alabama, and I can’t tell you how sad it makes me to see images like this. Images like this were all too common before Hurricane Katrina put Bayou La Batre under water and completely ruined the shrimping industry there. Combine that with the state of the economy, and what you get is a devastating amount of people living below the poverty line. Perhaps the saddest thing is how the typical Alabama resident vehemently opposes raising taxes to support public programs and improve education, which is clearly what is needed here.
- Posted by ElysiaWest central Illinois small towns look just as poor and neglected in many areas, just minus the bayous. Rural areas are increasingly poor all across this country, and there is no help coming.
- Posted by Linda HThis part of America looks beautiful. The ppl in those houses have moved somewhere else. They are still alive. They just need to move out to other places with cities, and jobs. It’s not AIG’s fault. The pics look like nature is reclaiming some of its land, and shifting us around. Who’d begrudge?
- Posted by Ian[...] which are being affected first by the creeping depression can become deteriorated quickly. In Mobile County AL, homes are crumbling and falling apart at the seams, with the occasional boat or car stranded in a garden or alongside the road. The occasional [...]
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