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Hurricane Camille August 5-22, 1969
 

This fall, coastal residents are riding out the 1999 hurricane season, as residents of Mississippi remember Hurricane Camille, one of the nation's most powerful hurricanes thirty years after it made landfall along the Mississippi coast in August of 1969. Spawned by a tropical wave off the African coast, Camille became a full-blown hurricane southeast of Cuba and intensified in the Gulf of Mexico, with winds up to 200 miles per hour. Camille made landfall on August 17th, its center passing over Clermont Harbor, Waveland, and Bay St. Louis with a devastating storm surge that flooded coastal areas from Louisiana to Alabama. Camille ripped a swath of destruction along the entire length of the Mississippi coast. In low areas, the rows of houses stopped a block or two from the beach leaving only bare foundations along the beach front. From Pascagoula to Pass Christian, piles of lumber, building materials and trees were thrown together by the surge. Highway 90, the main coastal thoroughfare, was covered with sand in many sections and completely washed away in other sections. Camille weakened as she moved northward through Mississippi but combined with a weather system in Virginia causing, in total, $1.42 billion in damage and over 250 deaths.

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