Hurricane Camille: Part 3 – Camille's
Toll
>>Part 1 Camille's Beginnings
Destruction
along >>Part 2 Terror of Landfall
Mississippi's Gulf Coast >>Part 3 Camille's Toll
was complete. Stately >>Part 4 Memories of Camille
antebellum homes that
once lined the beaches were blown completely off their
foundations.
Trees, power poles and vehicles were twisted and scattered
by the huge waves and 200-mph wind gusts. The 20-ft.
surge lifted huge barges from the Gulf and deposited them miles inland, in some cases
on top of homes.
Sand, washed up with the surge, covered portions of
Highway 90, the main coastal thoroughfare. Other
parts of the roadway were completely washed away.
The Army Corps of Engineers indicated that to make
some 530 miles of roads in the area passable, about
100,000 tons of debris would have to be cleared away.
Camille is one of only two Category 5 hurricanes on
record to make landfall along the U.S. coastline. With wind gusts estimated at 200
mph, the hurricane demolished nearly everything in its path. What the winds did not
level, the crashing waves did.
Water, some 20 feet above normal sea levels in places,
rushed inland as Camille came ashore. On top of the huge
surge, the highest ever recorded in the United States, wave
heights reached 30 to 35 feet, battering everything
standing in their way.
"The combination of those things was absolutely deadly
for people," said Dr. Steve Lyons, Tropical Weather
Expert at The Weather Channel.
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Camille killed 256 people in the United States: 143 along
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the Gulf Coast and an additional 113 in the Appalachians,
where its remnants caused massive flooding in the days following landfall.
Though the death toll was considerable, experts say that it could have been much
higher.
In 1969, weather reports on television were much different than they are today. The
general public did not have access to satellite images, so "people didn't really see this
monster coming at them," Lyons said.
Luckily, the area where Camille came ashore was "not hugely populated," Lyons said.
"People were not aware of the potential of what could happen."
Camille caused more than $1.4 billion in damage from the Gulf Coast to the
Appalachians. Mississippi absorbed the brunt of Camille's destruction.
The hurricane decimated the state's entire coast, with destruction stretching three to
four blocks inland. Roadways were impassible and several bridges, including the Bay
St. Louis Bridge and the Biloxi-Ocean Springs Bridge, were severely damaged by the
rushing water.
Camille reduced hundreds of beach homes near Clermont Harbor to piles of debris.
The mayor of Poplarville, Miss., estimated that Camille had damaged 90% of the
town's homes to some degree.
By the time Camille reached the Mississippi/Tennessee border, it had weakened to a
tropical depression, but its destruction was far from over. The remnants of the
hurricane traveled northeastward, crossing Kentucky, Tennessee and Ohio before
reaching West Virginia and extreme southern Virginia.
Late Tuesday, August 19, Tropical Depression Camille dropped torrential rains on the
eastern slopes of the Blue Ridge Mountains that lasted for
eight hours. Flash floods and landslides ensued, as did
record flooding in Virginia's James River Basin.
The floods were the worst natural disaster Virginia had ever
seen. Communication links, including all but one of the
state's highways, were cut. More than 100 people died with
many more reported injured and missing. Camille's total
damage in Virginia topped $19 million.