WAVELAND, Miss. - Hurricane Katrina seemed to take a particularvengeance out on this town.
The storm virtually wiped Waveland off the map, prompting stateofficials to say it took a harder hit from the wind and water thanany other town along the coast.
Rescue workers there Wednesday found shell-shocked survivorsscavenging what they could from homes and businesses that werecompletely washed away. The air smelled of natural gas, lumber androtting flesh.
"Total devastation. There's nothing left," said Brian Mollere, aresident who was left cut and bruised. Katrina tore his clothes offand he had to dig in the debris for shorts and a T-shirt.
Katrina dragged away nearly every home and business within a halfmile of the beach, leaving driveways and walkways to nowhere. Thewater scattered random reminders of what had been normal, quietlives: family photos, Barbie dolls, jazz records, whiskey bottles.
The town of 7,000 about 35 miles east of New Orleans has beenpartially cut off because the U.S. 90 bridge over the Bay of St.Louis was destroyed. There is no power, no phones, no way out - andnowhere to go.
State officials would not confirm a death toll in the town, butMayor Tommy Longo estimated that at least 50 residents died, TheClarion-Ledger reported. City Hall is gone, with nothing but a knee-high mural of a beach scene still standing.
Mollere had set up camp on the wreckage where his family's two-story home and jewelry store once stood. A couple of chairs and asheet of plastic protected him and his dog from the sun and spits ofrain.
Mollere doesn't usually smoke, but he sucked on a Kool menthol andcollected bottles of whiskey and Barq's root beer that had washed upnearby.
He recalled swimming out of the store with the dog as the waterrose and finding shelter in a house that survived. "If it had beennight, I would have drowned," he said.
His 80-year-old mother did drown in the storm. She had evacuatedwith some family to a grocery store in neighboring Bay St. Louis. Asher family members swam away to escape the storm, his mother, whoused an oxygen tank, stayed behind.
Mollere's father was a local folk hero for being one of the fewpeople to stay behind in Waveland during Hurricane Camille in 1969.The elder Mollere swam along and grabbed onto a white horse, and bothwere saved.
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