In Pascagoula, Katrina claims a neighborhood

BY TONY GNOFFO
Knight Ridder Newspapers

PASCAGOULA, Miss. - (KRT) - The homes on Beach Boulevard didn't have a chance.

All that stood between them and the surging Gulf of Mexico at the height of Hurricane Katrina on Monday was the boulevard and a low concrete seawall. Wednesday, the boulevard, the seawall - and the gulf - were still in place. Almost all the houses were gone.

People who lived on the boulevard, including Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., and their neighbors in the blocks behind them, said their community was a showplace in this city of about 25,000 people 110 miles east of New Orleans. Now its distinction is that it is probably the hardest hit neighborhood in the city, which was still without power and running water Wednesday, said the deputy police chief, Scott Ferguson.

Officials say they do not know if anyone perished in the community as the gulf tried to wash it away. Some folks in the Beach Boulevard community said they believed some neighbors were unaccounted for.

Many people stayed in their homes during the storm, including Nanette Clark, who lives several blocks behind the boulevard. She and her friend, Jayne Davis, spent the night and day of the storm moving furniture to a higher floor as water lapped, then pounded, at the front door. Some water did seep in, but the door held.

Davis was glad she stayed there; her own home was one of the St. Charles Condominiums in nearby Biloxi, where 30 people were killed by the storm surge on Monday.

On Tuesday night, Davis said, she and Clark shot at looters from the second-floor balcony of her pink house with gingerbread trim. Nobody was injured and the looters scattered, she said. Many hand-painted signs in that neighborhood warned looters that they were likely to be shot by armed homeowners.

Police said they had detained dozens of people for looting, but had to let many of them go because the city's jail, and others in surrounding communities, could not be occupied because they lacked power and plumbing. "We treat each one on a case-by-case basis," Ferguson said Wednesday. Most of the looters, he said, "are the unusual clientele we have even when there isn't a storm."

Stopping looters and restoring water and sewer service were high priorities for officials in Pascagoula on Wednesday. Just getting the sewers operable by restarting city pumping stations "would do much to improve morale," said the city attorney, Melvin Mitchell.

He said the pumping stations would be restarted as soon as generators arrive to power them. And just as he said that Wednesday afternoon, two trucks carrying generators rumbled by the police station. "God bless generators," he said.

Two of the region's economic engines are in Pascagoula, and both have been idled by the storm. Officials at the Northrop Grumman Ship Systems - the old Ingalls shipyard - and at the Chevron Oil Refinery were unavailable for comment Wednesday. But city officials said they expected that the plants would not return to full operation for weeks or even months. Northrop Grumman employs about 10,000 people, the refinery has about 1,200 employees.

On Beach Boulevard on Wednesday afternoon, Lott could be found doing the same thing as his neighbors: picking through the debris that used to be his home. On a sandy patch of ground, he had carefully arranged family mementoes - a framed photo, a china serving plate, small brass sculptures. Across the debris field that was their backyard, his wife, Tricia, searched tearfully for anything else she could save.

"It wasn't a fancy house," Lott said. "Just a Creole cottage, but it was built in 1854." Under the 200-year-old "big old momma tree," he said, he'd entertained former Vice President Dan Quayle and other political luminaries.

"You can take the house," he said, "but you can't take decades of memories."

Miss. Struggles to Deal With Dead Bodies

By RUSS BYNUM
Associated Press Writer

September 1, 2005, 4:53 PM EDT

PASCAGOULA, Miss. -- Crews are driving around coastal Mississippi, picking up bodies left on sidewalks like garbage and depositing them in refrigerated mobile morgues. Coroners are conducting autopsies in parking lots because the only available light is from the sun.

Most Hurricane Katrina relief efforts are focused on the living, many of whom are struggling to get enough food, water, shelter, power and medical attention. The dead are a lower priority, and many bodies have been putrefying since the water receded Monday.

The official death toll was 126 and rising Thursday as search-and-rescue teams and dogs go through the ruins of neighborhoods washed away by the huge storm surge.

Most of the bodies in Jackson County -- where the beach towns of Pascagoula, Gautier and Ocean Springs were swamped -- have been taken to the Heritage Funeral Home in Moss Point. The business has no water, power or phone service, making the job of storing and identifying the dead difficult for county coroner Vicki Broadus and a forensic pathologist working with her.

A refrigerated truck was running in the parking lot Thursday with 10 bodies, six of which could not be identified. Broadus said most of the victims drowned or suffered severe injuries when buildings collapsed around them. Their faces have been distorted from the water or the rubble and they have started to decompose. Their identification and clothes were swept away, and many bodies had drifted miles from home.

"We are looking for any scars, tattoos, dental work. I'm doing DNA, fingerprinting and photos," she said Thursday. "It's not easy. This isn't like looking at James standing there and telling what he looks like. These people really are not identifiable right now."

On the other side of the state in Waveland, one of the hardest-hit towns, police and others drove past obliterated homes in pickup trucks, stopping where bodies had been spotted by officials or reported by family or neighbors.

"All we've been told is that there are bodies lying around, and we can't get to them all," police patrolman John Saltarelli said.

Many family and neighbors tried to treat the bodies with respect, using what they found amid the debris to wrap the bodies.

Wednesday, the crew picked up an older woman's body that had been laid out on a sidewalk in front of a single-story brick apartment complex. A flower-patterned curtain covered her body, and her arms were outstretched. Her face was contorted.

Police did not know her name.

Search and rescue crews were still trying to work their way to areas west of Waveland, expecting to find more bodies. Teams of dogs were sent into the rubble to try to pick up the scent of the living, or the dead.

Some survivors were pulled out as late as Wednesday, when crews found an 80-year-old man under 12 feet of debris in Long Beach. Officials did not release his condition or name.

Broadus expects many more bodies in Jackson County. They have been examining bodies on a table in the parking lot, washing the corpses with a soap, searching for identifiable marks and taking fingerprints, photos and material for a DNA sample.

When done, they apply a topical preservative, zip the body back into a bag and put it back in the refrigerated truck.

When people call to report missing people, Broadus suggests giving more than the basic details about age, weight and height. She wants to know what surgeries people have had, what clothing they were wearing and even what kind of underwear they had on.

"If they routinely wear boxers or briefs, whether they have dentures or partial plates -- anything that might help us," she said.

It will be at least a week and maybe longer before any funerals are conducted, Heritage manager James V. Miller said.

"If we could get power, if we could get phone service, we could serve the families we have waiting," he said. "Then you have to be able to coordinate with cemeteries, casket suppliers and vault companies."