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at least 190 miles per hour hit the city, while winds of 150 miles per hour or more raked the area east of Biloxi. In Bay St. Louis and tiny Pass Christian electrical fires raged unchecked during the storm. At a NASA site near Picayune wind velocities up to 160 miles per hour were recorded. Tides ranged 15 to 30 feet above normal just east of the eye and up to five feet above normal as far east as Apalachicola, Florida.
On Monday morning the sun was out hot and clear, a familiar Gulf coast summer day. Survivors emerged from their shelters in shock and looked at the incredible desolation left by the storm.
In Louisiana’s lower Plaquemines Parish a massive tide surge over the Mississippi River levees had removed almost all traces of civilization.
Six-thousand persons had made their homes in the community of Buras along the Mississippi; only six structures remained standing.
Then begun the task of counting the cost of the storm. The death toll at this writing stands at 140 in Mississippi and southeastern Louisiana with 76 persons missing.
Some statistics reported by the Red Cross provide evidence of the destruction of the storm: 5,238 homes destroyed, 11,667 suffered major damage; 1,007 trailer homes, 569 small
businesses, 32 boats destroyed or severely damaged; at least five trucking terminals completely destroyed, with damage to highways, bridges, railways, and waterways running into millions of dollars; the Port of Gulfport almost completely destroyed, at least 94 vessels sunk or grounded in the Mississippi River; oil rigs foundered, pipelines smashed, and land bases destroyed; enormous agricultural losses in crops, timberland, tung, pecan, and orange trees, with some 5,000 cattle drowned. The dollar figure in damage could pass the $1 billion mark; no figure could measure the human cost.
CAMILLE weakened slowly as she moved inland and moved on a curving path through Mississippi, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Virginia during the 18th, 19th, and 20th of August. She returned to her birth place in the Atlantic on the 20th, and still was able to summon up enough strength to regain tropical storm wind forces of 65-70 miles per hour.
Two days later she merged with a frontal system some 175 miles off Cape Race, Newfoundland, and lost her identity, but the mangled coastline of Mississippi, Alabama, and the Louisiana delta will long bear evidence of the passage of the most savage hurricane in recorded history.
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