Lin, I was actually in dental school in New Orleans. Until hours before Camille hit, New Orleans was in her cross-hairs. The entire city and all the lower parishes were evacuated, but I stayed put. Just before Camille was due to come ashore she swerved to the east only 50 or so miles, and Pass Christian Mississippi was where she came ashore. My wife and I had family in Jackson, MS and the following day after Camille hit, we hopped into our tiny VW and headed east into Mississippi. Soon after we crossed the border of Mississippi, we had to head north because the highway was washed out. At that time, the largest producer of tung oil in the world was in southern Mississippi. We were 50 miles north of the coast and saw that the thousands of acres of tung oil trees were totally gone. I don't think a single tung oil tree was ever re-planted. Tung oil is still used in all the high-end paint/varnish finishes. I don't know where the tung oil comes from. Probably China!
Camille was the most powerful hurricane to ever hit the US, and its winds were a sustained 200+ mph. That's equivalent to an F5 tornado. No one, neither the Air Force (there is an AF base less than 50 miles from Pass Christian) nor NOAA nor any state weather station knows what the top wind of Camille was. Their wind velocity instruments were built to register up to 200 mph, and all those wind-stations were blown away. IF it had hit New Orleans (remember, Katrina was centered on the Mississippi Gulf coast, not New Orleans), experts estimated that New Orleans would have been under 30'-50' of water, the entire city.
I was lucky.
I know a lot about hurricanes. I have been through, literally through five of them. I never evacuated. I could write a novel about my experiences in hurricanes and in storms out in the Gulf. I guess God had a use for me to stay around a bit longer.
The after-math of Camille and Katrina were almost exactly the same. Katrina was a much, much larger hurricane but also a much, much weaker one. Her winds were only 140 mph. Thus the damage from Katrina was much more widespread, covering a much larger area. But the Mississippi coast line looked the same.
