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Weathermen Claim 56,600 People Could Have Died In Camille Wrath
BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Hurricane Camille, the century's worst storm, baffled trackers and forecasters, and gave them less than a day's notice that it was heading into the Mississippi Gulf Coast, the head of the National Hurricane Center says.
Dr. Robert H. Simpson said here Wednesday night that what warning time that was available saved as many as
50,000	lives according to information gathered by disaster agencies working in Mississippi.
Despite forecasts and tracking by weather bureau computers, the hurricane “just kept going north-northwest” instead o£ taking the predicted north-northeast tact that would have carried it into Florida as predicted, Simpson said.
It wasn’t until 5 a.m. Aug. 17, some 19 hours before Camille roared ashore with 190 mile per hour winds and 20-to-25 foot tides that the forecast could be revised to give the Mississippi coast 12 hours daylight warning.
Simpson said some 75,000 people were successfully evacuated from the hurricane area. Had they not left their homes, he said, only some 25,000 would have survived.
He said people “feel they’ve been cheated a bit” when a hurricane doesn't come their way or is not as powerful as predicted.
“You can’t take chances,’’ he declared. “When you're told to evacuate, you simply have got to evacuate.”
He described attempts to forecast Camille’s movements as a “humbling experience for anybody that had anything to do with it.”
“We have a long way to go in improving forecasting techniques. Not all of it is a learning process. Some involves better equipment and facilites.”
Scientists “haven’t scratched the surface” in attempts to tame the furry of hurricanes, he said.
150,000 BIBLES TO GO TO COAST
Society Is Sending Free Books to Churches
GULFPORT, Miss. — The American Bible Society in New York will be sending 150,000 free Bibles to the Gulf Coast as a result of orders placed by area pastors and church representatives at a meeting to discuss the church’s Bible needs.
Churches from Bay St. Louis to Ocean Springs and from several counties north of 1 the Coast were represented at the meeting at the Handsboro Baptist Church, Gulfport. Conducting the conference was J. Edward Cunningham of the Bible Society. The society sent two other men with Cunningham, one a photographer and one who taped the entire meeting.
Information on the campaign to supply the Mississippi Gulf Coast with free Bibles will appear in the New York Times, according to Cunningham.
I J. C. Broom of Gulfport initiated the appeal to the Bible : Society following the hurricane, after he heard churches requesting anyone with a Bible to spare, to donate it to a certain church. Broom has been named Coast representative /or the Society. The 150,000 Bibles will be sent directly to his home and picked up there by churches who ordered them.
Broom said the society intends to supply him with an overload of the books so others who have not yet ordered, can still get Bibles upon their arrival.