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HARDWARE DEALER Alden L. Manffray conducts business as usual despite a sagging ceiling tlial was propped up after a visit by Hurricane Camille which lowered the
—AP WIREPHOTO.
overhead of his store. Mauffray described business as “good” some three weeks after the storm caused heavy damage to Bay St. Louis.
Activity Seen Along Strip of Wrecked Miss. Coast
Busy Bulldozers, Cranes ; Are Everywhere
By BILL CRIDER ; GULFPORT, Miss. (AP) -
*	Now the heavy smell of death is
■	gone. Sounds of life are every-where along the strip of Missis-
; sippi coast wrecked by Hurri-; cane Camille.
‘ Along a 30-mile stretch of
■	gulf, from Waveland near the
■	Louisiana line to Biloxi, the
•	bulldozers, cranes and trucks ! are busy.
.' Ton by ton, what used to be ’ man’s structures along the , . pleasant coast are being shoved »	. into ragged piles, snatched up
. by the iron teeth of the cranes’
*	grapples, hauled away.
» Whatever comes next, it won’t
-	be the coast that was. It grew ^ up helter skelter, like Topsy, ; and had its own flavor.
:	‘OLD	COAST GONE’
; "The old coast is gone,” said ; Douglas llayward, squinting
*	along the white sand beach near ; Waveland. “All the old homes, ^ the heritage, the tradition — : it’ll never come back, no mat-’• ter what.”
His father’s solid comfortable home had easily withstood a century of storms. It disap-„ peared during Camille’s fcro-; cious 200 miles per hour winds and monster tides Aug. 17.
;• Just a few bricks were left at the foundation. The rest of it
-	was somewhere ' among the £ 100,000 tons of debris which the
•	Army Corps of Engineers fig-‘ ures has been cleared away ■t since Camille struck.
:	Most	of	the 100,000 tons han-
.• died by an Army construction : battalion, Navy seabees and civilian contractors was stripped away from some 530 miles of streets and roads to make them
•	passable.
LOT MORE DEBRIS There’s lots more debris for ijthe civilian contractors, - with their 1,274 men and 729 pieces of , j;,equipment, who have taken over , ijfrom the soldiers and sailors.? K* . /' f! Wreckage on private proper-;.	j'ty, for	instance* could not	be
; '	J touched	until owners signed	lia-
;^bility releases—a process now ’funder way. A c’orps spokesman /	.	jj said'Vraking the wreckage	off
,	>	4 private	property will take	an-
2+----!-------------:--------------
’	- 3 _
other 45 to 60 days.
The Red Cross estimated 5,500 homes were destroyed, with major damage to 12,409. Small businesses destroyed or heavily damaged: 647.
Since serious rebuilding work must await completion of the massibe cleanup, most residents who face the necessity of rebuilding have had time to ponder the uncertain future.
REBUILDING RISK Should they rebuild, risking another storm?
Hurricanes reached this coast, in varying degrees of violence, in 1915, 1947 and 1965 before Camille—the most intense hurricane ever to hit the United States.
“Only a handful are leaving,” said Robert L. Hamilton, vice president of Hancock Bank in Bay St. Louis. ‘Some are saying to hell with lt and pulling out. They'll go to Kansas and be hit by a tornado, or to California to ride a mudslide or get singed in a brush fire. Where can you go that you run no risks?”
This mixture of optimism and fatalism is the common attitude you find, even in the area of greatest devastation — Wave-land, Bay St. Louis, Pass Christian, Long Beach and the miles of handsome homes that used to line the beach between towns.
ECONOMIC BACKBONE Most merchants and businessmen, the economic backbone of the communities, say they’ll try to rebuild.
In Pass Christian, a town of about 4,000, Warren Griffon had a prosperous drugstore. Now, among other things, it lacks a roof. Even so, it was in much better shape than some buildings around it.
Griffon, a gray-haired run-
pled man with horn-rimmed spectacles, has a temporary job lined up in Biloxi. He’ll work to help finance a new top for the store, which he will leave in the custody of his wife, also a pharmacist.
“Business will be a long time getting back to what it was,” he said, “but it will, of that I am positive. At first all this just made me sick. But so much already has been done. I think that in another year or so you won’t know this happened. It’ll be bigger and better.” REMAINS VAGUE
Bigger and better—the theme threads through almost every conversation. Just how this is to be accomplished- remained vague.
“Everybody looks for Uncle Sam to come in here and do something substantial,” said A1 den L. Mauffray, operating a hardware store in Bay St. Louis.
Actually, Uncle Sam already has put forth something substantial: some $3 million just to clean up the mess. The Small Business Administration reported applications for $3.5 million in home loans and nearly $2 mil lion in business loans.
Thai’s a drop in the bucket.
George Hastings of the President’s Office of Emergency Preparedness estimated it will cost well over $65 million in Missis sippi and Louisiana for ‘‘restoration of public facilities, debris clearance and protective measures.”
FUNDS REQUIRiED
“This is in addition to the many millions required for restoration of homes,' businesses and other private property,” he added.
Gov. John Bell Williams also
sounds the bigger and better theme.
He set up a 10-member “Governor’s Emergency Council” to make long-range rebuilding plans for the battered coast. He prefers rebuilding under a grand design—nO helter skelter, no Topsy.
Big planning arouses suspicion in Mississippi. The state depends heavily on the federal dollar in its economy, but its politicians habitually decry “big government.” And urban renewal, a potential source of rehabilitation money, is a dirty word in the legislature.
At one time, state law— progressively modified since— forbade Mississippi cities to participate in urban renewal.
NIXON’S VISIT
President Nixon, in his recent slop at the Biloxi-Gulfport Municipal Airport, was noncommit tal about any federal plans— though he gave Gov. Williams’ ideas a boost.
But in any case, said Nixon, everything depends on the heart, spirit and strength of the people involved—unless these are high, federal millions won’t make such difference.
If that be so, consider H. A. Torgersen, 45, who operates a gasoline station' in Waveland, where he has lived 29 years and intends to go on living.
The hurricane of 1947 wrecked his 15-room home facing the gulf. With what he could scavenge from the wreckage, he built a 14-room home in the same spot.
Now he is salvaging what he can to repair what he has left. Will it be 12 rooms or 13? He doesn’t know yet. He just knows he likes it there.