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CAMILLE: 20 Years Later
Page 7
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Shirley Owen of Gulfport finds the name of a lost relative.
ON COAST, 141 DIED DURING CAMILLE
Hurricane Camille took 141 lives on the Coast when she vented her fury here. These are the lives she washed away:
Gulfport Elizabeth Bishop Mrs. Emma Lyons Hosch Roy Moffett Anneas Moses Mr. Nyne Newman Geneieve Owen Sam Owens Emile Prager Mrs. Emile Prager J.C. Rich Mrs. Nellie Rich Fred Rose Kathleen Simmons Albin C. Wagner
Long Beach Melvin Bayer Edward N. Farmer James B. Farmer Frances Ann Magee Stacy Magee E. Lawrence Nelson Jessie Emma Nelson Mr. L.W. Savage Auther P. St. Onge Mrs. Selma Faye Sykes Miss Leone Welch
Biloxi
Rene Bettencourt Theresa Bettencourt George Brown Mrs. Florence Brown Miss Maude Colbert Mrs. Frances Halat Ramey Oelke Mrs. Evelyn Oelke Rebecca Oelke Sgt. Irwin Oelke John Walker Woznaik Mrs. Sheldon Woznaik
Pass Christian
Mary Alexander Hannah L. Barker Leonard Barnes Mrs. Leonard Barnes Charlotte Barrett Mrs. Arden Barrett Victoria Barrett Mrs. Belehumion Janet Bellehumeur Amelia Benoit Deborrah Berry William H. Bloodworth Fannie A. Bogg Merlin Boyer Myron Bundy Bridget Burton Tom Carmichael Christian Marie Chauvin Diedra Chauvin James Chauvih Kathleen Chauvin Mrs. Wanda Chauvin Cynthia Louise Cornell William Howard Covington Anna Dambruik Elizabeth Dambruik John Dambruik Aline Daniels Mrs. Bonnie DeMetz Arthur Dykes
Mrs. Julia McDonald Everett Frederick Gerlack Shirley Ann Geshke Shirley Geske James J. Gilbert Mrs. Corrine Graham Andrew Green Mrs. Jerry Hall
Mrs. Helen Harden
Margaret Hollins
Merwin Jones
Mrs. Helen C. Jones
Phoebe Jones
Luanne Keller
Elsie Logan
Mrs. Ellen Lundberg
Annabelle Luttge
Jack Matthews
Emma Clare Mayer
Olive McBryde
Hugh McDonald
Mrs. Hugh McDonald
Willie James Norman
Mrs. S.L. Savage
Andrew Hartwig Schenyten Sr.
Andrew Hartwig Schenyten Jr.
Fred Schudstet
Mrs. Charlotte Schudstet
George Smith Jr.
Helen Smith Mrs. Mary Smith Rose Smith Willie Stallworth Anna Williams Bridgett Williams Charles Williams Clara Mae Williams Deborah Williams Eddie Keith Williams Esther Williams Floyd Williams Jeremiah Williams Myrtle Williams Sylvester Williams.
Pass Christian Unidentified
White female, age 60s, 140 lbs., 5’8”
White female, age 30s, 135/140 lbs., height unknown White female, age 40s, 105/110 lbs., 5’2”
North Biloxi
Mr. James Gilbert (N. Biloxi)
Mrs. Marie Gilbert (N. Biloxi)
Hancock County
Col. Karl S. Axtater Capt. William Henry John Mrs. Bessie S. John Mamie Gianilloni Peter Robito George Henry Kamflade Hattie Palmer Roosevelt Palmer Mary Easton
Jackson County Father Gilbert O’Neal Miss Jessie Goff Cornelius E. Talbert Emmett Robinson
Within State
Buchatanna
Pearl Holifield Laurel
Helen Holifield Picayune Lamont Mitchell.
Out of State
New Orleans
Jack Granville Alexander Mrs. (Mary) Granville Alexander Huey Alexander Granville Alexander Jr. Bessemer, Ala.
D.L. Griffin.
Residence Unknown Lydia N. Benny Douglas Jones Mrs. Maurice Stella Tucei James H. Woodall
Camille howled with a fury, left ‘absolute, eerie silence’
By PATRICK PETERSON
THE SUN HERALD
■	A 20-year-old memory of fury and devastation lingers with Coastians who rebuilt their lives in the aftermath of Camille’s wrath.
Newcomers can only imagine the fury of the 1969 storm that leveled 68 square miles of the Coast. And for those who did not see the devastation of the 200 mph-plus winds, imagination can never paint a true picture of the destruction.
“They just don’t realize that something like that could happen,” said Biloxi’s O.M. “Jac” Smith Jr., who spent the night of Aug. 17 trapped in his Biloxi home.
Camille’s floods crashed nearly to Smith’s door in Biloxi’s Magnolia Mall and left a pile of rotting debris in his front yard.
“This whole house was tap-dancing and shaking,” said Smith, a veteran of a dozen hurricanes. “It’s just something that is mind-boggling.
Camille brought civilization on the Coast to a sudden halt. In the weeks after the storm, life for the survivors slowly returned to normal. Smith and his family lived without electricity and water. To get drinking water, he found a free-flowing well in a destroyed seafood factory. To cook meals, he built an open fire in the back yard.
Coastians who did not experience this cannot comprehend the conditions Camille brought to Biloxi.
“They’re interested, ” Smith said. “They’ll listen if you tell them about it. But it is like, out of sight, out of mind.”
Newcomers seem to think a disaster like Camille could never again befall the Coast, Smith said. Veterans are not so optimistic.
“It could happen any time, ” Smith said. “It could happen this year.”
Silence after the storm
At 5 a.m. on the morning after Camille, Harrison County Civil Defense Director Wade Guice left the Emergency Operations Center, which was near the site of the present courthouse.
He couldn’t go far.
Debris clogged the roads. Guice drove as far as he could and climbed a pile of debris to survey the damage.
“One thing that struck me was total, absolute, erie silence,” said Guice. “No automobiles running, no birds singing, no dogs barking.”
The Coast likely has never been so quiet. The death toll reached 141. Among the dead were 36 housewives, 22 students and 8 children under 6 years old. These deaths still haunt Guice, even though the evacuation plan has been credited with saving 50,000 lives during the storm that destroyed
5,662	homes and caused major damage to nearly
14,000	homes.
Living with the memory of Camille, Guice has spent the past 20 years working to prepare the Coast for the next major hurricane. His efforts have included at three-year lobbying attempt to make it a crime to disobey an evacuation order. During the next hurricane, anyone who refuses to evacuate can be forced to leave and fined.
If a hurricane like Camille again approached the Coast, everyone in the danger zones will evacuate, Guice said, though some might leave their homes under arrest.
“I don’t think we would lose anyone, ” said Guice, who has been unable to finish a book about Hurricane Camille. “Every time I pick it up, I start to weep and have to put it down,” he said.
Like an A-bomb
Dr. Kinsey Stewart, a clinical psychologist at the Counseling Center in Biloxi, is one of the few Coastians who had seen destruction similar to what Camille wrought on the Coast. As a young man, Stewart had been in Nagasaki, six weeks after an atomic bomb was dropped on that Japanese city.
“It sure made me think about that, ” Stewart said. “That sense of looking out at that absolute destruction, this was the same kind of thing.”
Camille leveled 68 square miles of the Coast — the same effect as seven seven strategically placed 5 megaton nuclear bombs.
Stewart and his family evacuated to Jackson. They returned to find the bottom floor of their home stripped to the studs by the floodwaters.
Stewart gained a respect for hurricanes that many Coast newcomers do not have. He moved his family to a house 20 miles inland. During hurricanes Elena and Fredric, he offered to let his office staff seek refuge in his home. “Most of my younger staff and those that did not experience any of the other storms, did not come out, and just were not concerned.”
After Camille, Stewart read that a hurricane of such force comes only once in a 170 years. Nevertheless, he decided to put a safe distance between his home and the beach which had been leveled in the storm.
Newcomers to the Coast remain optimistic that hurricanes will not harm them, but for the generally optimistic Stewart, Camille changed his way of looking at storms.
“You just don’t believe that anything can happen that bad, ” Stewart said. “Up until that time, I sort of really believed it just wasn’t really going to happen. ”
The survey
“There was a serious underestimation, particularly by the stayers, of the potential destructiveness of the storm.”
“There was evidence of the ‘spirit of defiance’ said to be characteristic of disaster culture.”
“Examples of reckless challenge of the storm were rare, but there was extensive evidence that the population as a whole preferred not to evacuate.
By late Sunday evening nearly everyone knew that a violent, potentially lethal storm would hit their area. Even at that time, leaving was seen by most people as a thing to do only as a last resort.”
From another perspective it is remarkable, given the tendencies noted above and the characteristics of the storm and the area, that so many respondents did evacuate and that so few persons were killed.”
After the disaster, bitterness and skepticism was not widespread.
In a survey of 384 people, some 81 percent agreed that the communities along the Coast would cooperate to rebuild the area.
►	84 percent felt the hurricane warning system was effective.
►	89 percent felt most involved in the emergency after the hurricane did a good job.
►	73 percent disagreed that a disaster like this seems to bring out the worst in people.
►	63 percent believed the Coast would be a better place to live than it was before Camille. Some 24 percent didn’t know.
►	15 percent felt the hurricane' had been hurled against the Coast as a punishment for sins.
►	87 percent felt that people on the Coast would be much better prepared for future hurricanes. One person who stayed through the storm commented “This place will clear out immediately the next time evacuation is recommended.”
An interview with 107 people who stayed through the storm revealed:
►	38 percent stayed because they felt safe.
►	20 percent had lived through earlier hurricanes.
►	15 percent didn’t want to leave their property.
►	12 percent did not understand or believe the warnings.
►	8 percent were influenced by others.
►	6 percent had a sick person at home.
►	4 percent had no place to go.
►	8 percent said either the traffic was too heavy, they waited too late, stayed to help others or had fatalistic thoughts.
►	3 percent gave no answer to the survey.