Fifty years later: Remembering Hurricane Camille
Published 8:48 am Saturday, August 24, 2019
“We had Nash Roberts and we had Wade Guice,” he said. Roberts was a weatherman at WWL-TV in New Orleans, and Lacy said, “He was the go-to guy.”
Just to watch his forecast, Lacy said his family had to make sure the television antenna on the house was turned the right direction to pick up the signal.
Coast Civil Defense directors Wade and Julia Guice were credited with saving many lives by going door-to-door and telling people to evacuate during Camille.
Following Camille, Lacy and Eleuterius were called up to serve with the National Guard.
“Mainly our duty back then was to get people off rooftops,” Eleuterius said and he recalls the rescue of a family stuck on the Biloxi Bay Bridge.
The water was rising and the winds were roaring, he said, and their vehicle couldn’t go forward or back.
The Guard used a duck that could travel on land or water.
“That’s how we got them off,” he said, far different from the helicopters used to rescue people after Katrina.
“I was planning a dinner party the night of Camille,” said Frisbie, who lived with her family on South Beach in Bay St. Louis.
Instead, her mother-in-law packed the car with her photos and silverware while Frisbie wrapped her silver in pillowcases and stashed it in a laundry basket.
Before they left their home, “I stuffed it in the chimney so the looters couldn’t get it,” she said.