Stunned residents of the Mississippi Gulf Coast staggered Wednesday through a jarring landscape shorn of the people and things that had made it home and offering bleak and even dangerous prospects for the coming days.
The death toll along the Mississippi Coast passed 100 and continued to climb. Two silver hearses and a truck eased through debris-covered neighborhoods in Biloxi, collecting bodies. Neighbors and loved ones arrived to search for the missing, sometimes breaking down in hysterics. On Oak Street in Biloxi, overwhelmed police officers could only cover one body and leave it there as they moved on their grisly rounds.
''I've never seen devastation so bad,'' said Maj. Dalton Cunningham of the Salvation Army. ''I've been through Andrew, Hugo, Charley, Ivan -- this is by far the worst.''
A search-and-rescue team from Florida helped, but its black Labrador retriever found only bodies. Lacking heavy equipment to dig bodies out of the rubble, the team marked most houses with a red ''X,'' meaning it was unsafe to enter, and a number showing the number of bodies inside.
Survivors had no electricity, scarce water and no way to reach the outside world to let others know their fate. Many resorted to looting. Police imposed a curfew.
Looting broke out in Gulfport, where water, food, cigarettes and beer were some of the most sought-after items. The police department's normal force of 195 was reduced by an unknown number because of the storm, and the remainder were struggling. The hurricane demolished the main police station.
''We are very overwhelmed,'' said Gulfport police Cmdr. Alfred Sexton.
In Biloxi, Municipal Judge Eugene Henry ordered the release of 20 to 30 Harrison County jail inmates being held on lesser charges. ''It will make more room for looters and anyone accused of a violent crime,'' said Biloxi City news officer Vincent Creel.
In the hardest-hit areas, parents wandered the streets begging for water for their babies. Local officials grew frustrated at the slow relief response and feared that they were being overshadowed by the disaster in New Orleans, where TV networks anchored their broadcasts.
''We're lost,'' said Steve Loper of Pascagoula, lamenting that he had not seen any sign of relief. ''We have no direction, no leadership. People are in bad trouble.''
The Salvation Army's office manager in Gulfport lost her home and has been sleeping in her office since the storm. ''Help has to come from the outside, because there's nothing here to help people with,'' Sally Lohrbach said.
Everywhere there was death.
At Biloxi's Quiet Water Beach apartments, where 30 people were believed to have been swept out to sea, only a slab of concrete remained.
Along Howard Avenue in east Biloxi, the search for survivors was shadowed by the hearses and a truck for the bodies of the dead. In a five-block area, firefighters recovered five bodies in a few hours. Debris was 12 feet deep in places.
There were shared stories of survival among those who could not or would not evacuate.
Bob Stump approached two firefighters with Bonnie, a blond, curly-haired 2-year-old, in tow. ''You got any water for us?'' he asked. All they had was a bottle of Gatorade. They gave it to him.
His family of six lives in east Biloxi. They rode out the storm in a center bedroom. The winds picked up their home and shoved it into the street.
Only the room they were huddled in survived. Their neighborhood is thigh-deep in mud, and all their clothes are caked in it. The family's youngest child is 9 weeks old.
''Her mother's breast-feeding, but we've got to find something for her,'' Stump said. ''They ain't brought one bit of food into this town.''
Distributed by the Associated Press
