Fifty years later: Remembering Hurricane Camille
Published 8:48 am Saturday, August 24, 2019
They were able to get a $30,000 grant to raze their house, but it cost $75,000 to elevate it, she said, because the fireplace also had to be raised.
“It took me four years to get back to the farm,” she said. “It took all of our savings.”
Some things didn’t change from Camille to Katrina and many of the places that were rebuilt to the same building standards after the first hurricane were destroyed again. These are the similarities:
— People perished in both storms. During Camille, 143 died in Mississippi. At Trinity Episcopal Church in Pass Christian, which had stood for 120 years, 14 people died, most of them from one family. Katrina’s toll in Mississippi was 238 and 68 missing — “still missing,” said Eleuterius.
— Resilience shone through both storms. Within days of Camille, 6,000 flags waved atop the debris. Signs appeared declaring “Camille won the battle. We won the war.” The flags and the signs appeared again after Katrina. The Daily Herald carried the photos and the story of the Coast without missing a day’s publication in Camille and again after Katrina, when the staff won the Pulitzer Prize for reporting.
— Kindness. Neighbors took care of each other and used the resources they had to share the food in their freezers and the blankets on their beds with those who no longer had freezers or beds. Frisbie said one of her husband’s clients brought an ice chest full of food and a propane stove to cook it, and they used the stove again after Katrina.
— Mountains of debris. Downtown Pass Christian looked like a lumber yard after Camille, with wood filling the streets where buildings had stood. With so many homes damaged during Katrina, the sides of every street along the Coast were piled high with people’s homes and life possessions. Tires repeatedly were flattened by nails and car windshields cracked from flying debris.
— Issues lingered long after the streets were cleared and federal dollars began flowing in to rebuild. The storms left medical issues and mental stress for children who feared each thunderstorm and adults who never recovered from the storms.
— Help arrived. The military was quick to help the Coast dig out after Camille. “At the time we were in Vietnam so we had a very large military presence,” Lacy said. The airmen from Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi and the Seabees from the Naval Construction Battalion Center in Gulfport also were there after Katrina, despite the damage to their own bases. The Salvation Army, Red Cross, Mennonite Disaster Services and other volunteer agencies responded to both storms. A record $1.3 million was raised after Camille when Bob Hope and other stars performed during a “We Care” telethon, while A Concert for Hurricane Relief raised $50 million after Katrina.
— The long rebuild. The stores in Edgewater Mall in Biloxi reopened in a few days after Camille and the years immediately following saw a building boom with the construction of Garden Park hospital in Gulfport and Gulf Coast Medical Center in Biloxi. New hotels were built along with the Coast Coliseum. Southern Miss and William Carey University established Coast campuses and Gulf Islands National Seashore was established. But then construction stalled, just as it did when the national recession hit South Mississippi three years after Katrina. Biloxi’s Point Cadet only came back when casinos began opening 23 years later, Carter said. The casinos all were closed by Katrina and reopened on land. Many beachfront lots remain vacant 14 years after Katrina due to the cost of wind insurance and the expense of elevating to national flood standards as South Mississippi continues to recover from Katrina.