BY MATTHEW MORIARTY: Staff Writer

Parts of the town are simply gone.

Bay St. Louis, Miss., took a direct hit from Hurricane Katrina on Aug. 28. A 28-foot storm surge came through and wiped out many of the homes in the beach community, washed out a bridge and left hardly a structure without damage.

The loss in life is high, with 45 confirmed dead and more than 50 missing. About a fourth of the confirmed dead in the entire state of Mississippi belong to this town of about 8,000 people.

A small group of Moore County leaders visited the community Saturday to cement a relationship in which Bay St. Louis could become the center of Moore County’s disaster relief efforts. The idea is that this county would adopt a similar community in the disaster area.

The effort is called Moore Friends for Mississippi.

Southern Pines Mayor Frank Quis; Dr. Susan Purser, superintendent of the Moore County school system; Bob Boone, vice president of professional services for FirstHealth of the Carolinas; Kelly Miller, CEO of Pine Needles and Mid Pines; and Steve Bouser, editor of The Pilot, visited Bay St. Louis for a day to find out what the needs were and how Moore County could help.

The group surveyed the damaged town and met with Bay St. Louis’ leaders. The trip yielded plenty of ideas, but no concrete decisions on what Moore Friends for Mississippi could do for the community.

At a meeting at The Pilot office Monday, the group further committed to help the Mississippi community by naming Lee Bowman, who was operations director for the U.S. Open, to be the director of the effort and to see how it could provide a tax-deductible way to raise money.

Also, William Dean, the Pinehurst resident who first voiced the idea, promised that he and his wife would help coordinate the efforts. The Pilot is setting up a Web site, and Publisher David Woronoff said The Pilot would donate $10,000 to get things started.

The group named Quis its chairman and Boone as vice chairman.

On Saturday, Buzz Parker donated use of his plane and flew the group down on his two-engine King Air. It landed at Stennis International Airport near Bay St. Louis early Saturday morning.

‘Need Everything’

Evidence of the storm’s fury was everywhere. Pine trees that looked like smaller versions of Moore County’s longleaf pines were snapped in half. A plane was entirely overturned. A hanger was missing a wall and appeared on the verge of collapsing. The military was clearly in charge.

The group was first met by Master Sgt. P.J. Martin with a U.S. Army National Guard unit out of Niagara, N.Y. He informed Parker that supplies were constantly coming in, so the less time that the plane could take up space, the better.

U.S. Air Force Capt. Brandon Thompson of Nashville, Tenn., said that 2.5 million pounds of supplies had come through the airport already in big planes like 747s, DC-10s and C-130s.

“Everything you can think of,” he said.

Quis asked if Thompson knew much about what the needs were.

“People need everything,” Thompson said. “They’re still finding bodies.”

Bay St. Louis Town Council members Doug Seal and Jeff Reed met the Moore County group and loaded them into two pickup trucks for the short ride into town. Seal was wearing a yellow T-shirt with a torn sleeve. He said it’s one of three shirts he still owns.

Five miles outside town, the trucks passed under Interstate 10. There was a line of dirt and debris on the side of the embankment about 20 feet up: the high-water mark.

Littering the highway into town were cars that had been parked near the high ground of the road. The flood waters poured in and pushed them around like Matchbox cars. They’re just scrap metal now.

As the group closed in, it become apparent that most structures have damage. According to Boone, any building that took in more than four feet of water is going to be condemned.

Along the highway, reminiscent of the stretch of U.S. 1 between Southern Pines and Aberdeen, there are also signs of hope.

On the left side of the road, a Kmart parking lot has been converted into a medical triage area. A sign proclaimed it Camp Katrina. Farther down the road, a sign above a business said: “God bless Bay St. Louis. We Will Be Back.” Everyone kept saying that they were blessed.

Reed, who is a pastor, said he spent the night of the storm rescuing people from the rising water. About 14 people took shelter at his church, the Powerhouse of Delivery Ministry.

He thinks they may have been lost had they not been able to contact him.

“I’m so glad we got them out of there,” he said.

A Wasteland

In Bay St. Louis, the closer to the ocean, the worse the damage. Reed fears that some longtime residents decided to stay because they thought they’d seen the worst 35 years ago in Hurricane Camille.

“Unfortunately, I think some people stayed behind because of Camille,” he said. “A lot of lives were lost because people thought this hurricane wasn’t going to be as bad as Camille.”

He was 10 years old when Camille struck. At the time, he thought of it as an adventure.

“That night is etched in my mind,” Reed said. “I remember the wind sounded like a screaming woman. The rain sounded like someone throwing rocks against the window.”

Reminders that Katrina is in a different category from Camille roared past the truck’s windows with the frequency of pine trees on Midland Road. A boat sat in the drive-through of a Burger King. Though law and order has essentially been preserved, a sign read: “Looters Will Be Shot.”

Closer to the beach, the smell became apparent. A muddy sludge of saltwater, sand and sewage remains. Houses are reduced to splinters. Clothing and furniture hang from the limbs of dying trees.

The military has cleared the roads by pushing the debris to the sides. Piles of debris are on every corner. It’s a wasteland.

Reed looked on this as progress.

“If the military wasn’t here,” he said, “we’d all be going crazy.”

On the waterfront, the most affluent and maybe hardest hit part of town, Richard and Martha Heausler surveyed what used to be the family’s summer home. A lot of good memories of family reunions were associated with the home, he said.

They are going to rebuild. The house was insured. They said they would definitely be back to have a traditional fireworks display on the Fourth of July. They said they may be one of the lucky ones.

“Other people lost their first house,” Richard said.

“Their only house,” Martha added.

Their neighbor, Dr. Wesley McFarland, and his wife, Rosemary, picked through the remains of what was once his home. McFarland delivered Seal. In fact, Seal said, he delivered half the people in town.

“I had a front porch full of shells and fish,” McFarland said. “Oh, my goodness. It’s all gone. It’s all gone.”

Down the street, the bay bridge is washed away.

“You’re hiding in the shelter,” Seal said, “and you hear rumors, The bridge is gone. The Bay Bridge is gone. And you say, it can’t be gone. But it is. Just concrete pillars sitting there.”

In downtown, the city hall was damaged. It took on about 6 to 8 feet of water. The town is working out of its historic train depot. On the way there, the truck passed a cemetery. Reed explained that some caskets floated up out of the ground.

At the depot, Ed Foley volunteered. He’s from Fort Meyers, Fla., and lost two homes in Hurricane Charley last year. He said he was grateful for the help he received.

“It’s time to pay them back,” he said.

Inside the depot, Bay St. Louis’s leaders met with Moore County’s leaders to try to hammer out a way to help. Getting the infrastructure repaired and the schools open are the town’s top priority, but Moore County couldn’t help with that and would only be in the way.

‘It’s About People’

Money could help (Moore Friends for Mississippi is in the process up setting up an account to take donations), and some other ideas were floated. Seal said that the people were craving a sense of “normalcy.” So someone suggested that Moore County could help the high school football team hold its game at the end of the month.

Moore County could donate equipment, all of which was ruined or stolen by people without clothes to wear.

Another thought was that Moore County could help by taking on the repairs of a town park.

“We need a place where kids can play,” Seal said. “The problem is: How do you sanitize a slide? We’ve had people lose limbs after they stepped on nails. It’s septic.

“We’re trying to get the Corps of Engineers to start working on the parks. Because, eventually, if we get the parks cleaned up, when people start coming back to rebuild their houses, and if we have a park for the kids to play, that they feel safe at, then the kids can play while the parents work and clean up.”

Many Moore County municipal workers have volunteered to help Bay St. Louis with the paperwork necessary to resume the business of government.

“Somewhere down the line we’re going to have to pay the piper and do all the reporting that’s necessary,” Mayor Eddie Farve said to Quis. “We’re picking up with some of our staff folks, trying to set them upstairs to where they can catch us up on all our record-keeping. ... If there’s anybody you have that’s familiar with all of that could help us organize and coordinate it, help us get it going, that would be a really big help.”

Bay St. Louis depended on tourism, and the 41 percent of its economy came from the casino.

“Our businesses are pretty much devastated throughout the town,” Seal said. “So now our challenge is to get a budget in five days and set a tax levy. So we’re going to get some help and tighten our belts up again.”

Extended Visit?

Back in Southern Pines, Quis suggested during the Monday meeting that getting people from Moore County down to Bay St. Louis for an extended period of time might lead to other suggestions of what can be done to help, pointing out that first group spent only a few hours on the ground.

Moore Friends for Mississippi also wants to match organizations, churches and businesses so that those here can help their counterparts there. Miller got the name of the head of The Chamber in Bay St. Louis.

Purser, who moved here from Mississippi, knows the superintendent there and talked with her about how to help the schools. Boone met with a representative from the hospital.

The group decided Tuesday to focus on several projects: repairing one of the parks, providing equipment for the football team, and sending down a load of cleaning supplies.

Boone also spoke with one of the companies that provides supplies such as protective masks, gowns and gloves to FirstHealth Moore Regional Hospital. The supplier told him that it could get a tractor trailer full of supplies for the hospital in Bay St. Louis for $42,800. Boone said this will be a tangible early goal.

“We want to try to collect that within the next week,” he said.

Other long-term projects will be added.

Monday, Purser told the group meeting at The Pilot that after digesting what she saw, she felt that a little thing like getting uniforms for the football team would be worthwhile.

“The more I thought about it,” she said, “the more I realize that a community isn’t about the homes destroyed. It’s about the people. These people were so upbeat. You have to impose on them. They’re not accustomed to asking or receiving aid.”

Anyone wanting to make a donation or offer help can call 693-2474.