Mississippi Coast Areas Wiped Out

'Nothing Left' In Small Town; Public Health Crisis Along Coastline

(CBS/AP)  State officials would not confirm a death toll in Waveland, but Mayor Tommy Longo estimated that at least 50 residents died, The Clarion-Ledger reported. City Hall is gone, with nothing but a knee-high mural of a beach scene still standing.

Although the hurricane dealt Mississippi's economy an immediate blow, the effects will be felt long-term, experts say. When Mississippi gets around to rebuilding its heavily-damaged casino industry, for instance, there are predictions they'll be placed on dry land. Questions are now being asked whether the law that required that they float also spelled doom.

The head of the state's gaming group says the issue will be key for lawmakers when they return for the next legislative session.

More than half of the 13 casinos in Biloxi, Gulfport and Bay St. Louis were destroyed by Hurricane Katrina.

Along with tax revenues, the casinos were a source of jobs. Before the storm, about 14,000 people worked in the casinos along the Mississippi coastline. Each casino had a land-based hotel, and thousands more employees worked in those.

Mollere, a resident of obliterated Waveland, 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 Kool menthol and collected bottles of whiskey and Barq's 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.

"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."