Google Earth Satellite Imagery

Last month, Google Earth released version 4 of their incredible mapping software. Download it for free and do a search for 6028 Lakeshore Road, Bay St. Louis MS 39520 to see a pre-Katrina satellite image of our church property

Compare that to the post-Katrina NASA satellite image of the same location. While the lack of clarity makes detail viewing difficult, you can see the massive debris field strewn in every direction. Look just right of the vertical running railroad tracks along the roughly horizontal running Lakeshore Road to see where the church buildings used to sit. In the middle of the image of the cropped view below, you can see the old church sidewalk as a short diagonal line. The sidewalk used to lead from the front of the church building to the back side of the fellowship hall. Use that as a reference point when comparing the pre-storm Google Earth map.

Lakeshore Baptist site after Katrina

I have not taken the time to create a Google Earth overlay of the post-storm image, but if any technophile out there would like to do so, I would love to see it and share it here.

Also, go to Google Earth Hacks web site and download the chilling montage image of the Katrina storm track to see the eastern (bad side) of the eye wall pass right over our church property. The graphic illustrates us taking the brunt of Hurricane Katrina. Its a reminder that when you visit Lakeshore, your standing at ground zero of the storm that devastated the gulf coast.

I do not know of any recent satellite imagery that would show the sprawl of our current campus. If anyone finds one, please let me know.

1 Comment

Hey Don, my dad and I met on the Coast (him from Mobile, me from New Orleans) on Monday and he took me over to Lakeshore. It was the first time I’d ever been there, even though we lived in Long Beach from 87-94. Man, I just want to say even though I missed you by a couple hours, I stopped by and saw what was happening in town. Dad showed me some of the houses you guys are rebuilding. I wish I’d been able to make it over there sooner. I’ll continue to pray for y’all and try to make it known what’s going on there.

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