Saved by a Bush

Yahoo News: Spindly Bush Saves Miss. Police Officers---

WAVELAND, Miss. - For five hours, 14 members of Waveland's police department held on desperately to a spindly bush as they watched the town they swore to protect being torn apart by Hurricane Katrina.

Debris shot past them; tin roofs fired up into the air; a shrimp boat swept past in churning sea waters as they clung to the 8-foot-tall bush. Blasted by a storm surge some say was 30 feet high Monday morning, this town got some of the worst of Katrina.

Three days later, the anemic-looking, red-tipped bush in front of the police department has become a shrine to Waveland's men and women in blue. There's now a hand-carved wooden cross placed in the bush to highlight its role in a remarkable story of survival — a sign of hope as police go about the grim duty of recovering bodies and trying to help shocked survivors in the town of 7,000 about 35 miles east of New Orleans.

"You can see where there's no bark," said Lisa Parker, the chief's secretary. "That's where we were holding onto it."

Added patrolman Todd Blake: "The death grip hold."

Amazing.

All 26 members of the police department survived Katrina. Police are already making plans to transplant the bush for a permanent memorial when a new station can be built.

For Waveland's peacekeepers, there is a feeling of great gratitude amid the devastation.

They recount that a few months ago, an officer accidentally plowed into the bush with his car, but the bush bounced back. And, they said, the chief had been talking about chopping the bush down because it was ugly and obscured the view of the highway.

But he never got around to it.