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Luck Ran Out on Biloxi's Casino Row


By Dahleen Glanton, Chicago Tribune
Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News 

BILOXI, Miss. -- August 31, 2005 - In peaceful times the Gulf of Mexico serves as a quiet backdrop against the city's bustling casino row. But Tuesday this gambling city was in ruins, the victim of a hurricane that turned the gulf into a weapon that destroyed almost everything in its path.

This is a city that thrives on luck. And as far as major hurricanes go, Biloxi has fared well since Hurricane Camille came through in 1969. But on Monday, luck ran out with the arrival of Hurricane Katrina. Officials said 50 bodies had been recovered in Biloxi and hundreds might be dead. The property damage was in the billions of dollars.

Dazed residents made their way through Biloxi's streets, piled with debris, to survey what was left of their homes. In many cases, they found only crumpled wood and bricks, or stairs leading to nothing.

Edwina Craft stood across the street from the flooded Beau Rivage Hotel on Tuesday morning trying to decide whether she should head toward her home or check out the casino where she has worked for 10 years. She had ridden out the hurricane at Biloxi Regional Medical Center, where her mother is hospitalized. For 12 hours, she endured the hurricane's fury, fearing that any minute she and everyone else there would die.

"The room was shaking. The windows were shaking. They moved us from the sixth floor to the bottom floor, but that was not much better," she said as she headed down U.S. Highway 90 toward the casinos. "It flooded downstairs, and then the lights went off."

On the street, devastation was all around her. Uprooted palm trees stretched across the metal lampposts, and wrecked billboards blocked the muddy roadways. Her bank was demolished. So was the Burger King and the apartment buildings, convenience stores and gas stations she passed every day.

To her right, people were searching through the shambles of a convenience store and filling baskets with soft drinks and bottled water. A few blocks away, the parking lot of the Family Dollar Store looked like a Saturday morning flea market. People pushed grocery carts full of clothes down the street.

Bigger problems

No one from the 200-member Biloxi Police Department was in sight. They had bigger problems than looting to deal with. Too many people, officials said, were still stuck in their homes or buried beneath the rubble.

Officials said they had recovered 50 bodies but they cast doubt on a report Monday night that 30 had died in one apartment building. Estimates of the number killed at the Quiet Water Beach apartments ranged from three to dozens.

Biloxi's power grid was destroyed. There was no water, the sewer system was in ruins and electricity was out.

"People are still trapped in attics and on second floors of their homes. We are discovering bodies, and the numbers will continue to rise," said city spokesman Vincent Creel. "Biloxi is decimated. It's very depressing and very demoralizing for us. But we will come back, better than we were."

For a moment, Craft had hope. The gigantic guitar in front of the new Hard Rock Casino was still intact. Maybe things were not so bad farther down the road, she said. But it was worse than she could imagine. The Hard Rock Casino that had been scheduled to open this week was ripped apart.

The multistory Grand Casino Biloxi, housed on a barge that had been docked on the gulf, had been swept across the four-lane highway, crashing onto apartment buildings and other businesses. Like all the casinos on the strip, the Isle of Capri, where Craft works, was practically destroyed.

"Most of us are homeless now, and now nobody is going to make any money," she said. "Everybody is going to starve."

Streets as far as five blocks away from casinos and hotels were strewn with the slot machines, bags of rotting prime ribs, bottles of beer, furniture and garbage. The Ocean Springs-Biloxi Bridge, which extends across the bay, had collapsed into pieces. Beneath it, buses used to shuttle tourists to the casinos rested in the water.

Joan McQueen could not believe what she saw. "Oh, my God!" she screamed as she approached the bridge.

McQueen, 49, has spent most of her life in Biloxi, and because of that, she said, "I had no intention of leaving."

"I didn't go to sleep until 6 a.m., and by 9:30 the house was flooded. We couldn't get the door open so we had to crawl out the back window."

An astrologer, she said, had predicted that Biloxi would be hit by two major hurricanes, a small one and then another that would "wipe Biloxi off the map."

"I figure Camille was a baby and Katrina was the mama," she said.

Grim preview

The streets leading to Craft's home were a preview of what she would find on Ahern Street. A big antebellum home at the corner had been reduced to a rooftop sitting on a pile of rubble. Television sets, clothes dryers and overturned cars were scattered about.

It was hard to recognize her street with the landmarks gone.

"The Salvation Army building used to be there," she said, pointing to debris. "They used to set up for disasters there."

There was more. The VFW Post--gone. The Sea Shore Mission--gone.

On her street, neighbors whose houses were still standing tried to salvage what they could from the soggy mess.

Max Powell, 44, stayed home during the storm. Water rose to about 6 feet, trapping him upstairs. His house was heavily damaged, and like many others, he has no flood insurance.

"I put on a life jacket and waited it out," said Powell. "I was going to survive this thing no matter what it took."

Craft moved into her modest three-bedroom frame home 15 years ago, saving every dime she made to pay her mortgage and purchase furniture. Life had never been easy for her financially, but she feared it would now be worse than ever.

"Her sofa was turned on its side. The floor was covered with muddy debris. Everything inside was waterlogged.

She did not cry. "I'm not strong. I'm just trying to deal with it. I guess I'm in a daze," she said.

A crucifix hung from the doorway to her dining room. It was the only thing inside untouched by the storm.

"It was supposed to keep my house safe," she said, adding that she was born and raised Catholic. "I guess it let me down."
-----

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Copyright (c) 2005, Chicago Tribune

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