EIGHT or ten times each year, the southeast coast of the U.S. is struck by hurricanes. Born over the warm seas of the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico, these large cyclonic systems result from a peculiar blend of heat, winds, atmospheric pressure and moisture. Anywhere from 100 to 800 miles across, they rage north toward Cuba or Florida, assaulting everything in their path. Usually, however, they dissipate before they do too much damage, or veer out to sea. Only one out of four hit the U.S. They are ordinary enough so that they are systematically named, always after women—Beulah, Flora, Dora.
Last week the Caribbean produced a homicidal harridan with the deceptively gentle name of Camille. Camille visited on the Southeastern U.S. wind, rain, and floods of such unexpected scale that Dr. Robert Simpson, head of the National Hurricane Center in Miami, called it "the greatest storm of any kind that has ever affected this nation, by any yardstick you want to measure with."
In its five-day juggernaut, Camille left 300 dead and hundreds missing in five states. The death toll was expected to top 500 as floodwaters receded from inundated farms, shattered towns and cities. President Nixon designated coastal areas of Mississippi and Louisiana disaster areas, and was asked to do the same for Virginia.
Torrents of Rain. Killer Camille wreaked her greatest havoc where first she struck: the southern coast from Mobile to south of New Orleans. She slowed down as she sliced up through Mississippi and Tennessee, then unexpectedly exploded into torrents of rain that sluiced through mountain gorges in West Virginia and Virginia before finally swirling out into the Atlantic to die.
Camille blew harder than any hurricane recorded, and the barometer dropped to 26.61 inches, the lowest since a 1935 Florida hurricane. The storm was the deadliest killer since 1957, when Hurricane Audrey took 500 lives in the Gulf area.
Camille signaled her arrival by suddenly turning the Gulf Coast sky charcoal at midday. By 11 p.m., the wind had risen and the barometer had plummeted. Riding waves 22 feet high, throwing rain hard as bullets on its 210 m.p.h. winds, Camille hurled herself at the Louisiana and Mississippi shoreline, uprooting, ravaging, killing in her awesome kinetic fury. In one fearful night, at least 235 were killed. Property damage was estimated at $1 billion. Cars and houses were smashed like toys, trucks tumbled end over end, giant freighters tossed about and beached. For a time, the ocean reclaimed as much as six blocks of Pass Christian, Gulfport and other hapless Mississippi towns.