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Mississippi town practically wiped off the map by Katrina
(AP)
Updated: 2005-09-01 16:23
Hurricane Katrina seemed to take a particular vengeance out on this town.
The storm virtually wiped Waveland off the map, prompting state officials to
say it took a harder hit from the wind and water than any other town along the
coast.
Rescue workers there Wednesday found shell-shocked survivors scavenging what
they could from homes and businesses that were completely washed away. The air
smelled of natural gas, lumber and rotting flesh.
"Total devastation. There's nothing left," said Brian Mollere, a resident who
was left cut and bruised. Katrina tore his clothes off and he had to dig in the
debris for shorts and a T-shirt.
Katrina dragged away nearly every home and business within a kilometer (half
mile) of the beach, leaving driveways and walkways to nowhere. The water
scattered random reminders of what had been normal, quiet lives: family photos,
Barbie dolls, jazz records, whiskey bottles.
The town of 7,000 about 55 kilometers (35 miles) east of New Orleans has been
partially cut off because a key highway bridge over the Bay of St. Louis was
destroyed. There is no power, no phones, no way out _ and nowhere to go.
State officials would not confirm a death toll in the town, but Mayor Tommy
Longo estimated that at least 50 residents died, The Clarion-Ledger newspaper
reported. City Hall is gone, with nothing but a knee-high mural of a beach scene
still standing.
Mollere had set up camp on the wreckage where his family's two-story home and
jewelry store once stood. A couple of chairs and a sheet of plastic protected
him and his dog from the sun and spits of rain.
Mollere doesn't usually smoke, but he sucked on a cigarette and collected
bottles of whiskey and root beer that had washed up nearby.
He recalled swimming out of the store with the dog as the water rose and
finding shelter in a house that survived. "If it had been night, I would have
drowned," he said.
His 80-year-old mother did drown in the storm. She had evacuated with some
family to a grocery store in neighboring Bay St. Louis. As her family members
swam away to escape the storm, his mother, who used an oxygen tank, stayed
behind.
Mollere's father was a local folk hero for being one of the few people to
stay behind in Waveland during Hurricane Camille in 1969. The elder Mollere swam
along and grabbed onto a white horse, and both were saved.
On Wednesday, Jim Clack held the hand of his elderly mother, Mercedes Clack,
and led her through the rubble of her Waveland home.
"You might fall, Mama," he said gently.
Mercedes Clack, blocking the glare with wraparound sunglasses, said of her
splintered home: "Oh, that was a beautiful house. Remember it?"
She brightened when she found an antique radio and a few of her jazz records.
"Do you think they can be salvaged?" she asked her son.
Other sweaty, mud-caked survivors camped out in shopping center parking lots
in Waveland and neighboring Bay St. Louis, some using tents or mattresses they
had been taken from stores. People lined up to get ice and bottled water
distributed by emergency workers.
Frank Lombardo said he and his fiancee, Bridgette Favre, tried to weather the
storm in their apartment, but moved to a high school in Bay St. Louis when the
wind and rain grew too strong. He said he broke into the gym's football supply
room to find cloth bandages to wrap some elderly people's wounds.
Marcel and Shannon Whavers and their 2-year-old daughter, Ayanna, stood
Wednesday at the end of the devastated bridge that connected Bay St. Louis and
Pass Christian. They said they felt cut off from the world.
"We're in trouble for a long time," said Shannon Whavers, 29.
"What are you going to do?" said her 30-year-old husband. "We saw a guy just
lying in the highway, not knowing where to go."
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