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ille
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card’s tale is good television commer-ar-old operator of an jartment building in I two of her tenants > disappear into the that had exploded
nad at the storm I m me further,” she er hospital bed, then id to get hold of that TV right away” id the doctor, leron Swayze, of t, my Timex is still
e of humor was not >se who had lost all , or those who had mrky water awash ram debris. Surviv-gony of devastation, who lost little, has mark on the Coast’s titude.
in the past 20 years,
: declared, “Camille but we won the
17 battle stretched hours of Aug. 18. returning the hard-by Camille — has nger.
me With the Wind’
rirling, 5-mile-wide iver the Bay of St. achfront Moon-Lite ass Christian was show the classic le Wind” that night, e theater emulated me.
of the town, causing to proclaim three m mayor of a city in
;lieu Apartments in ople throwing a hur-eceived no mercy whose deadly right-smashed the com-d over Trinity Epis-vhere 15 more, all e same family, were
nued to pluck away : of straw. Her long into Jackson Coun-our. In Hancock, evastated Bay St. ched nine lives, and in County lost 128 in Pass Christian, outed Riviera of ostrate.
rt of destruction in le known world was - no storm, no tidal juake, not even the ig of Hiroshima, XX) lives and had a >n of about three Wade Guice, direc-i County Civil De-?r recall. “The total I in Harrison Coun-i square miles.
Jars, Camille’s bill
HUE, Page 4
DENNIS HOISTON
A massive barge that was carried onto the U.S. 90 median in Gulfport by the hurricane was secured later by rope to a surviving palm tree.
Storm let loose huge paper rolls
By TRACY HEGGINS
DENNIS HOLSTON
Huge rolls of linerboard landed on 38th Street in Gulfport.
THE SUN HERALD
■ Hurricane Camille’s high winds and surging waters turned ordinary items into dangerous and volatile objects.
Especially destructive to many homes in West Gulfport were the hundreds of rolls of linerboard, heavy paper used to make boxes. The rolls, which weighed an average of two tons each and were as large as 6-feet wide, were waiting to be shipped from the East Pier in Gulfport before the storm.
“Linerboard is shipped to Honduras and made into boxes to ship bananas back in, ” said Bob Finley, terminal manager for Standard Fruit Company in Gulfport.
Linerboard is a heavy paper with a basis of 69 pounds, compared to normal wrapping paper that would be around 30 pounds, Finley said. A roll of linerboard in 1969 could be anywhere from 63 to 81 inches wide and hold more than 8,000 linear feet.
Finley said that since Camille “the inventory this time of the year is kept down because of the possibilities (of a hurricane).” However, during the year, “there could be anywhere from 500 to 5,000 (rolls) on the pier.”
R. W. Taylor of Gulfport remembers the huge rolls that plagued the area he works and lives in. • “That’s where a lot of your damage was done,” said Taylor, general manager of Gulfport Paper Company, which was not a supplier of the linerboard. “Those rolls of paper went through houses and literally crushed walls.
“I walked into a home that had them sitting all through the house, ” Taylor said.
The rolls went as far north as the railroad tracks in some places. Some, swollen by water, doubled in weight.
To help in the cleanup, the Corps of Engineers used cranes, forklifts and endloaders to remove the rolls. Surprisingly enough, some were salvageable.


Hurricane Camille Camille-20-Years-Later (03)
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