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five or six miles away from Mississippi Sound along the Eastern shores of the Bay of St. Louis. '
HERE, Camille hit the hardest, according to the records. The wind was highest, the water was highest, both slamming from two directions.
Here are the shambles of half a dozen or more tourist courts, historic old homes and churches, major shopping centers, thousands of stately pines and spreading old oaks as familiar to many New Orleanians as the Oaks of Audubon and City parks.
The debris of a single shopping center represented more than a thousand truckloads of broken bricks, smashed blocks, twisted steel and broken glass.
Add to this the scores of tubs and toilets, lavratories, and air conditioners of motels, the trunks and limbs of trees and you have* a major hauling job.
“they’re coming DacK.” ----------
A SIGN in >nt of The Ole Rebel Inn icils the story even plainer: “With God’s Help, and Yours, The Old Rebel Will Be Back.”	,
A. W. Cooper, Pass Chris- j tian insurance executive, has ! begun rebuilding Middlegate, one of the old mansions which has survived many previous storms since being built shortly after the turn of the century. It was damaged heavily by Camille.
Cooper, his wife, three daughters and his mother, a neighbor, Mrs. James Ckr-swell and her two babies, rode out the storm at Middlegate.
The nine, according to i Cooper, were downstairs until the 45x35 foot living room of the mansion blew away and the doors and windows of the home were tom out of their frameworks.
“Then, the water came,” Cooper said. “It was waist deep by the time we reached the staircase and ceiling high by the time we reached the second floor.”
j uooper saia matserraoor
a home built in 1840. 'vhere several persons died several others survived, there was another unusual story.
Those who survived the storm, by crawling onto a back roof, said the house lifted from the front and stood for several minutes on end. Then, the wind subsided and the house fell, the roof and second story collapsing onto the first floor.
Immediately behind this destroyed mansion is the home of John M. Parker Jr. Parker’s home received only minor damage from broken limbs.
Cooper tells one other unusual story of the freakishness of Camille in the Long Beach, Pass Christian, Bay St. Louis triangle.
FOUR FRIENDS were “riding out” the storm in a home on the west beach of Bay of St. Louis north of Hwy. 90.
One of the group walked outside and came back to warn the others that the bay was creeping on the shoreline.
“They rushed to get into their car. As they started to drive away,” they said, “the wind changed, the waters of the bay backed out and the
■	waters of the bay poured to the east.
“They said you could see the bottom of the bay by the headlights of their automobile like pouring tea cut of a saucer.
“I’ll say one thing,” said Cooper, “that I think will be chorused by hundreds if not ' thousands of coast residents:
“A few years from now it will be hard to point to a deep scar left by Camille. Our comeback is phenomenal, to say the least. Three weeks ago I would have said the coast is through.
“But tomorrow, let them tell us another storm is headed toward the Gulf Coast. . .there’ll be few around to watch the performance.”
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Hurricane Camille Camille-Aftermath-Media (093)
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