Biloxi, Miss. – If an aerial camera flying over Biloxi’s ruined peninsula were to zoom in, past the flattened houses, past the causeway crumpled like an accordion, past the barges that sailed inland, it might catch the sight of a pair of bare feet jutting toward the sky out of a square hole in a concrete slab.
“That’s J.D.,” said Jimmy Ellzey, studying the wreckage of the Tivoli Hotel. Then he gestured to a white, waxen knee, barely visible under the slab. “And that’s Sue.”
He walked along the slab that had been the roof of the two-story building, turned a corner, and pointed. “I played poker with him the night before,” he said. “He actually won 10 bucks from me. I don’t know his name. I just know he couldn’t swim.”
There were, the manager of the Tivoli said later, eight people under that slab. Eight people not yet counted in the rising death toll from Hurricane Katrina. Authorities said they had no firm tally and that large parts of the city had yet to be searched.
“We’re still going with the official count from last night, 40 in Biloxi,” said Vincent Creel, the city public affairs manager. “But that’s going to be very low.”
Gulfport Fire Chief Pat Sullivan said searchers were concentrating on looking and digging into huge piles of debris.
“These people could be down in a void, under a house. We’re bringing people out alive,” Sullivan said.
“I never thought I’d see something that looks worse than Camille,” he said, referring to the 1969 hurricane, “but this is worse than Camille.”
Creel said that many people had ignored evacuation orders because they, or their homes, had survived Hurricane Camille. But while Hurricane Katrina was not as strong – it was rated a Category 4 while Camille was a 5, the fiercest – it drove an unstoppable wall of water that Creel compared to a tsunami.
Over and again Tuesday, mud- covered people looked around and announced: “It’s worse than Camille.”
Picking his way through soggy debris where houses were piled on top of houses, police Officer Darren Lea said, “We’re going to be finding bodies forever.”
Death was only part of the devastation along the Gulf Coast.
There was also the hunger, the thirst and the homelessness. Widespread looting was reported, and the police, attending to life-threatening situations, Creel said, could do little about it.
Red Cross spokesman Peter Teahen said supplies were en route from staging areas in Birmingham, Ala., and Houston.