Thirty-six years before Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans and southern Mississippi, the region was visited by one of the most powerful hurricanes ever to hit the United States: Camille. Mark M. Smith offers three highly original histories of the storm's impact in southern Mississippi. In the first essay Smith examines the sensory experience and impact of the hurricane--how the storm rearranged and challenged residents' senses of smell, sight, sound, touch, and taste. The second essay explains the way key federal officials linked the question of hurricane relief and the desegregation of Mississippi's public schools. Smith concludes by considering the political economy of short- and long-term disaster recovery, returning to issues of race and class. Camille, 1969 offers stories of survival and experience, of the tenacity of social justice in the face of a natural disaster, and of how recovery from Camille worked for some but did not work for others. Throughout these essays are lessons about how we might learn from the past in planning for recovery from natural disasters in the future.

Nominated Best Nonfiction Book for 2004 --Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters On August 17, 1969, Hurricane Camille roared out of the Gulf of Mexico and smashed into Mississippi's twenty-six miles of coastline. Winds were clocked at more than 200 miles per hour, tidal waves surged to nearly 35 feet, and the barometric pressure of 26.85 inches neared an all-time low. Survivors of the killer storm date events as BC and AC--Before Camille and After Camille. The history of Hurricane Camille is told here through the eyes and the memories of those who survived the traumatic winds and tides. Their firsthand accounts, compiled a decade after the storm and archived at the University of Southern Mississippi, form the core of this book. Property damage exceeded $1.5 billion, $48.6 billion in today's dollars. Fashionable beachfront homes, holiday hotels, marinas, night clubs, and souvenir shops were devastated. The death toll in the state's three coastal counties--Harrison, Hancock, and Jackson--reached 131, with another 41 persons never found. The rampaging storm then moved north through Tennessee, Kentucky, West Virginia, and Virginia and sparked flash floods that killed more than 100 in Virginia before moving into the Atlantic. Camille is one of only three Category 5 hurricanes ever to hit the U.S. mainland. Along the Coast today, vacant lots, slabs of concrete, and mysterious staircases and driveways leading to nowhere are Camille's eerie reminders. The ruins that remain, however, are overshadowed by the dazzle and fun at the dozen casinos and high-rise hotels that dominate the modern beachfront. Once more the seashore is thriving. Rambling homes, the neon lights of motels and family restaurants, and the nets and masts of shrimp boats mark the skyline. For the Mississippi Coast, a historic retreat between New Orleans on the west and Mobile on the east--these are the best of times. This gripping story of the Coast's most devastating storm recounts what happened on a terrifying night more than three decades ago. It reminds, too, what can happen again.

With an hour-by-hour account--told by survivors--of 1969's Hurricane Camille, this book puts a human face on one of the nation's worst natural disasters. 16-page photo insert.

Three periods within the life cycle of Hurricane Camille (1969) are studied with radiometric and camera measurements from Nimbus-3 and camera information from ATS-3 in conjunction with conventional information.

Nominated Best Nonfiction Book for 2004 —Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters On August 17, 1969, Hurricane Camille roared out of the Gulf of Mexico and smashed into Mississippi's twenty-six miles of coastline. Winds were clocked at more than 200 miles per hour, tidal waves surged to nearly 35 feet, and the barometric pressure of 26.85 inches neared an all-time low. Survivors of the killer storm date events as BC and AC—Before Camille and After Camille. The history of Hurricane Camille is told here through the eyes and the memories of those who survived the traumatic winds and tides. Their firsthand accounts, compiled a decade after the storm and archived at the University of Southern Mississippi, form the core of this book. Property damage exceeded $1.5 billion, $48.6 billion in today's dollars. Fashionable beachfront homes, holiday hotels, marinas, night clubs, and souvenir shops were devastated. The death toll in the state's three coastal counties—Harrison, Hancock, and Jackson—reached 131, with another 41 persons never found. The rampaging storm then moved north through Tennessee, Kentucky, West Virginia, and Virginia and sparked flash floods that killed more than 100 in Virginia before moving into the Atlantic. Camille is one of only three Category 5 hurricanes ever to hit the U.S. mainland. Along the Coast today, vacant lots, slabs of concrete, and mysterious staircases and driveways leading to nowhere are Camille's eerie reminders. The ruins that remain, however, are overshadowed by the dazzle and fun at the dozen casinos and high-rise hotels that dominate the modern beachfront. Once more the seashore is thriving. Rambling homes, the neon lights of motels and family restaurants, and the nets and masts of shrimp boats mark the skyline. For the Mississippi Coast, a historic retreat between New Orleans on the west and Mobile on the east—these are the best of times. This gripping story of the Coast's most devastating storm recounts what happened on a terrifying night more than three decades ago. It reminds, too, what can happen again.

This reference traces the region's 400-year recorded hurricane history, from Jamestown to the present, drawing on accounts in newspaper articles, books, private journals, and interviews. Emphasizing the human side of a hurricane's aftermath rather than scientific aspects, each hurricane account tells how individuals and communities reacted to the storms. Storms are profiled in year-by-year entries from the 1600's to the current century.