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.ina iiM&s-i'lCAYUNE, MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 1947
Civilized People Go Back Centuries in Stormy Hours
5ut Anyone With Water Could Make Fortune
BY ELLIOTT CHAZE
(Th* Associated l'ress)
Gulfport, Miss., Sept. 22. — Ci-lization may be here to stay jt a hurricane can blow it back couple of centuries in less than ro hours.
A man with a dirty face and an ipty stomach is pretty much ;e the next fellow. Before the irricane he may have been sit-lg behind 16 cylinders and a istic steering wheel. But when 3 big blow hits he’s just an-ler scared human sitting be-id the eight ball. The winds lit power lines into a worth-s mess. Water supplies are ashed. Cooking fuel disappears gas mains are choked off linst possible fire threat. Friday’s winds produced me curious situations here as I barons and necktie sales-en alike huddled in dark hotel t>bies, staring at their laps, Iking foolishly of everything d nothing. Together they nibed as many as eight ?hts of stairs, cursing an ele-tor that refused to elevate, e man, after climbing eight chts, was so angry he refused tip the bellboy who had folded him with 30 pounds of gage. “I’m not paying 50 ts for a heart attack," the st said.
omen dressed in expensive ts clothes padded barefoot ss the glossy tiles of lobby s, bumming cigarettes from lgers.
man in a smart gray suit, ing one of those white side-;d vests affected by wealthy itives, sat in a corner gloom-intangling sardines from a •ing can with a dirty finger, streets were alive with roll-banned goods but restaurant was unavailable until mid-loon.
"nan -with a 50-gallon barrel
of drinking water could have sold it by the drink for a small fortune.
Two men became so thirsty they decided to drive 10 miles beyond the town limits to a beer parlor located on Paradise Point, a finger of sand along the coastline. They discovered that both the beer joint and Paradise Point had en completely digested by the hurricane.
A young mother, driven into the Gulfport newspaper office by the booming winds, placed her eight-weeks-old infant on an of-Ifice desk and dozed beside him. Upstairs an elderly lady frotr the beach district sprawled on the floor in a nest of old papers, sleeping.
Night moved in and the wretched thousands began stumbling about their shelters with the aid of a few sickly candles. They walked on one another. They said “excuse me/’ After an hour or so they simply walked on one another. The storm peak had passed, but dangerous winds still patrolled the streets, armed with razor-sharp sheets of flying tin and lances of broken n<eon light-tubing.
Twelve hours earlier the people had talked of movies and cars.
| below the ledge of the seawall.
I completely wreckir one lane of j the roadway.
At Biloxi, only trre yacht club land the USO building remained) jon the beach. A score of restau-' rants and concessions were ham-i mered apart by the wind and I waves and swept away.
In the downtown sections of I Biloxi, Gulfport and Pas^ Christian. winds broke plate glass windows, twisted off sidewalk awnings. The force of the hurricane jammed the wall of one supermarket out of line, collapsing the roof and sailing hundreds of cans of beans, sardines and soups into the debris. Throughout the day these cans rolled through the streets of the town.
A hard, steady rainfall Satur-
Continued on Page 8, Column 3
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ON HE Gif COAST
Listed as dead are:
Mrs. Archibald Boggs, 80, Long Beach; Joseph St. Gabriel Antonci, 79, Gulfport; Nathaniel Burwell Jones, 34, Long Beach; Mrs. Vester M. Smith, Mississippi City; George August Wiltenmuth, 63, Biloxi; Mrs. Agnes Davison, 60, Milwaukee, Wis., visiting in Long Beach; two unidentified negro girls, both found in Long Beach.
Mrs .Elece Shackford, Waveland; Mrs. Isabel Holman Hart, Waveland; Mrs. Stanley Nall, 38, Clermont Harbor; Mrs. Isabel Foltzer, 48, Clermont Harbor; Mrs. Kate Krutcher, 32, Lakeshore; John J. Bordage, 72, Lakeshore; W. W. Simmons, 80, So-bral street, Waveland; Mrs. Lulu Mogabgab, 80, Clermont Harbor; '•Irs. Marie Louise Spreen, 65, 554 Beach Boulevard, Waveland; Frank A. Spreen, 68, same address, Waveland; Beatrice White, colored, 48, Clermont Harbor; and a six-year-old colored boy, Lawrence (last name unknown) Clermont Harbor.
There is anxiety that this figure may increase as the debris, piled high ?.lor.£ the beaches, is gradually cleared away.
00	nsnmaiea ueaa; uuai Rushed in; Bar Tourists
¥-7
Natural Guardsmen were rus ed Saturday into the burrican stunned coastal sections of Missi sippi and tourists were barn from the area as the death tc mounted to an estimated 55 pe sons.
With direi-t communication transportation and highway faci ities still out of commission, r ports from isolated spots along tl coast said that Mississippi’s lus coastal playground lay in flat, sal bleached ruins as the aftermath hurricane winds which struck tl area early Friday morning.
The immediate threat o wholesale looting was acute ii some areas, and National Guarc and army troops sent to devas tated sections had orders t( shoot to kill.
At Biloxi, Miss., Mayor G. 1 Cousins, Jr.. called on the army ; Keesler Field to patrol the beachi and shoot, if necessary, to halt an looting. At Bay Minette, Ale Sheriff Taylor Wilkins said a N; tional Guard detachment was sei to Alabama Beach after looting 0( curred.
Believes Bodies Under Ruins
Following early reports of th mounting death toll, dispatche showed largest number of storr casualties probably occurred in th Waveland, Long Beach and Pas Christian. Miss., sections.
Buster Abadie, manager of the Gulfport Air Service, said the Gulfport chief of police had told him he expected 100 bodies to be recovered from the ruins of Pass Christian.
A special bulletin from Bay St Louis. Miss., said that at least 1. j persons were killed in the hurri
1	cane in that area, including five a Clermont Harbor, five at Wave land and two at Lakeshore.
In a radio message received hen , by the Naval Reserve radio unit j Reporter James H. Gillis of Thi | Times-Picayune said that tw<
I women were known dead in Gulf ; port and that with both the rail ! road and highway bridges down a I Bay St. Louis., the Navy Reserv< i was operating emergency boa service in the area.
I The navy reported that foui ; naval doctors, a number of corps-;men and supplies including blooc i plasma was being flown fron-; Pensacola, Fla., to the stricker
•	Gulfport area.
W. .). Hartson, a New Or-le;uis pilot, flew to Biloxi Sal* .and said he was told f|(fjnCS/nat 21 men aboard three roirfniercial boats were caught in the hurricane and were feared tost. Hart.soit said residents told him the boats had not been heard from and that a plane was searching for them. Estimates on damages caused by the hurricane on the coast are being made but reports were that the wind and waves tossed 40-foot yachts ashore 40 yards beyond the coast line, chewed several cities to bits and left more than 1000 persons homeless.
Yacht Club Destroyed Gulfport’s new $80,000 yacht club was flattened and lost in white-capped waves which piled over the seawall bordering the coastal highway.
Wind-drawn w a t. e r splashed loose the highway foundation, cli'onnins- Ifi-innli tioh.-	1