Hurricane Camille: Monster Storm of the Gulf Coast [Hardcover]

Philip D. Hearn (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 7, 2004

On August 17, 1969, Hurricane Camille roared out of the Gulf of Mexico and smashed into Mississippi's twenty-six miles of coastline. Winds were clocked at more than 200 miles per hour, tidal waves surged to nearly 35 feet, and the barometric pressure of 26.85 inches neared an all-time low. Survivors of the killer storm date events as BC and AC--Before Camille and After Camille.

The history of Hurricane Camille is told here through the eyes and the memories of those who survived the traumatic winds and tides. Their firsthand accounts, compiled a decade after the storm and archived at the University of Southern Mississippi, form the core of this book.

Property damage exceeded $1.5 billion, $48.6 billion in today's dollars. Fashionable beachfront homes, holiday hotels, marinas, night clubs, and souvenir shops were devastated. The death toll in the state's three coastal counties--Harrison, Hancock, and Jackson--reached 131, with another 41 persons never found. The rampaging storm then moved north through Tennessee, Kentucky, West Virginia, and Virginia and sparked flash floods that killed more than 100 in Virginia before moving into the Atlantic. Camille is one of only three Category 5 hurricanes ever to hit the U.S. mainland.

Along the Coast today, vacant lots, slabs of concrete, and mysterious staircases and driveways leading to nowhere are Camille's eerie reminders. The ruins that remain, however, are overshadowed by the dazzle and fun at the dozen casinos and high-rise hotels that dominate the modern beachfront. Once more the seashore is thriving. Rambling homes, the neon lights of motels and family restaurants, and the nets and masts of shrimp boats mark the skyline. For the Mississippi Coast, a historic retreat between New Orleans on the west and Mobile on the east--these are the best of times.

This gripping story of the Coast's most devastating storm recounts what happened on a terrifying night more than three decades ago. It reminds, too, what can happen again.

Philip D. Hearn, a longtime Mississippi news reporter and editor, is a research writer for the university relations office of Mississippi State University. His work has been published in Army Reserve magazine, Vietnam Magazine, and many newspapers.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Hearn brings readers a cinematic reconstruction of the devastating storm... he still has a reporter's eye for precise detail." -- Bookpage.com, August, 2004, by Edward Morris

"Hurricane Camille... reads like fine adventure fiction. That it is definitely non-fiction makes it all the more troubling and just downright good." -- The Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal, December 19, 2004, by Danny McKenzie

"In the last chapter--'The Next Camille'--Hearn points out that it is not a matter of if, but when the next killer hurricane will hit the Coast." -- Mississippi Business Journal, August 2-8, 2004

"What grips the reader by the throat are the oral histories, taken from survivors such as Paul Williams." -- The Biloxi (Mississippi) Sun-Herald, July 25, 2004, by Jim Fraiser

"With a little imagination, you'll feel as if you were actually present during that terrible night of death and destruction." -- Nationally syndicated (King Features) columnist Charley Reese, July 14, 2005

Hearn "builds an intriguing narrative out of the voices of Camille suvvivors." -- The Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal, August 5, 2004, by Bill Minor

Hearn "has produced a thorough, yet compact, work on the attack by this natural disaster on Mississippi's valuable Gulf Coast." -- d

Hearn's account "packs a great deal of punch" and features "a narrative style that makes it difficult to put the book down." -- Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, May 2006

Nominated best nonfiction for 2004 -- Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters

While acknowledging broader policy concerns... Hearn focuses on the variety of human experiences during Camille and does that quite well. -- The Journal of Southern History, Vol. 71, No. 3, Aug. 2005

From the Publisher

The history of Hurricane Camille is told here through the memories of those who survived the traumatic winds and tides. Their firsthand accounts, compiled a decade after the storm, and archived at the University of Southern Mississippi, form the core of this book.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 233 pages
• Publisher: University Press of Mississippi (July 7, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1578066557
• ISBN-13: 978-1578066551
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #573,614 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A Minor Account of a Major Catastrophe, April 20, 2005

By 

Gary F. Taylor "GFT" (Biloxi, MS USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Hurricane Camille: Monster Storm of the Gulf Coast (Hardcover)

Camille was one of three category five hurricanes to strike the United States of America during the 20th Century.

With sustained winds of 200 miles per hour, the second-lowest barometric reading recorded on the face of the earth, and a record storm surge of 24 feet, it came ashore on the Mississippi gulf coast on the night of 17 August 1969. By dawn 131 people were known dead and another 41 were missing, never to be recovered. Communities on the eastern side of the Mississippi gulf coast sustained significant damage; communities on the central and western Mississippi gulf coast were devastated. The remnants of the storm then flashed north, bringing torrential rains that touched off flash floods that claimed another hundred lives in Virginia and West Virginia.

I, all of eight years old at the time, was on the edge of the storm. My family resided in Pascagoula, a Mississippi coastal community near the Alabama border. We evacuated, and although Pascagoula sustained significant damage it was mild in comparison to what we saw when we--like many others--raced to take food, water, and clothing to friends who resided further west. The images are burned into my brain.

For many years I wondered why a historian did not turn attention to the horrors of Hurricane Camille. In 2004 I was pleased to find that one had: Philip D. Hearn, working from documentation at the University of Southern Mississippi, published HURRICANE CAMILLE: MONSTER STORM OF THE GULF COAST. The book debuted with considerable fanfare on the Mississippi gulf coast--but, unlike its subject, just as quickly made a noise like a hoop and rolled away. Consequently I did not come to the book until two years after its publication. Upon reading the book I understood why it failed to satisfy.

Unlike some other reviewers, I do not feel that Hearn is a bad writer per se; it is very clear, however, that he lacks the gift for sustained narrative, and his academic tone undercuts most of the human drama involved. His scope is also remarkably small: excluding preface and end notes, CAMILLE runs to slightly less than two hundred pages in slightly larger-than-usual typeface, and of its seven chapters at least two focus more upon the general history of hurricane strikes and the process of their formation than upon Hurricane Camille itself.

The end result rather like a credible if uninspired master's thesis. It is, at best, a minor account of a major catastrophe--and I found myself repeatedly frustrated with what I considered Hearn's failure to follow up interesting events and details in favor of information that seemed more properly suited to end notes. Still, now and then the personal accounts from which Hearn worked breaks through in a real and very powerful way; Hearn also does, I think, a very effective job in dispelling the myth of the "hurricane party" that was said to have been held at the ill-fated Richelieu Apartments. For these reasons I cannot bring myself to dismiss the book out of hand.

Some thirty years ago Biloxi, Mississippi and coastal cities further west were flattened by Camille. Today, with the advent of casino gaming and the ensuing construction boom, a tourist would be hard pressed to notice anything unusual about the area. But I, who now live in this city, can take you to the beach and point out the island that was split into two sections by the storm; I can take you to the marker, now overgrown with weeds, that notes the point at which the waves of "killer" Camille finally stopped. On the night of 17 August 1969 a monster came out of the sea; those who felt its power, no matter how slightly, cannot forget it; and we still await an account that will do justice to the event.

GFT, Amazon Reviewer

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Regrettable, September 23, 2004

By 

Kristy W. Howell (Hopkinsville, Kentucky USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Hurricane Camille: Monster Storm of the Gulf Coast (Hardcover)

Amazingly, Philip Hearn managed to turn seventy oral histories about the most deadly storm in Mississippi's recent history into one of the worst books I've ever read. As a Mississippi native, I heard stories of Camille throughout my childhood. I was mesmerized by the ferocity of the storm and terrified by tales of her destruction. When the Seafood Industry Museum opened on Point Cadet in Biloxi, I was one of the first in line, and I still remember chills I had when viewing the documentary "Camille, She Was No Lady." I had the good fortune to spend my formative years in Wiggins and Perkinston, Mississippi; there I learned history at Charles Sullivan's knee. My father was a colleague of his at Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College, and I spent most of my free time pestering Sullivan for stories as only a twelve-year-old fledgling historian can pester a hero. Both in and out of the classroom my "Mr. Charlie" taught me the importance of discovering our past. As anyone who has the honor of knowing Charles Sullivan will understand, his excitement and dedication changed my life, and made a true historian of me. I will never forget the first time I read Sullivan's (as yet unpublished) manuscript about his own experiences in Camille. Years after I read it I couldn't drive down Highway 90 without seeing ghostlike images of Camille's wrath superimposed on the new condominiums and casinos.

Now, twelve years later, I have completed my formal studies with Sullivan and greatly expanded my historical knowledge at the University of Southern Mississippi where I studied under Drs. Charles Bolton and Curtis Austin, directors of the Oral History Project. One afternoon I went over to McCain Library and listened to some of the histories that Hearn massacred. I laughed, cried, and finally sat in mute disbelief of the stories the survivors told.

As stated in his acknowledgements, Hearn utilized the same oral histories at USM, talked with Sullivan, and viewed the heartbreaking pictures of Camille's aftermath. Somehow he managed to remove all emotion from those captivating accounts. Hearn's prose feels rushed and scattered; his humor attempts to break the tension but is out of context and only manages to distract the reader. Fortunately, the author's choice of photographs is outstanding, but even they only serve to illuminate his uncomfortable prose. Unfortunately, Hearn's book is the only published history of Camille's destruction. It is regrettable that he ruined such a fascinating story.

18 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Very Poor Writing, August 30, 2004

By 

Douglas "drdoug62" (MAGEE, Montserrat) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Hurricane Camille: Monster Storm of the Gulf Coast (Hardcover)

This is without a doubt one of the most poorly written books I have read in several years.


Tragedies such as Hurricane Camille involve so many unique individuals and communities that a writer should have no difficulty in capturing the interest and emotions of even the most casual reader. This book includes the stories of many such individuals. And yet, the presentation of these individuals is so lacking in cohesion that the reader becomes more consumed in trying to keep track of who is who than in the tragedy of their stories.


Part of the reason for this problem is the lack of depth provided by the author. Most of the survivors written about, the reader learns, have their homes flooded, lose valuable possessions (that they will no longer care about), survive by hanging on to a tree or large object, pray, and find they have lost someone in their family. True? Undoubtedly. Interesting? Not in the way that these people are portrayed. All of the stories are so similar that the reader quickly reaches the point that each reiteration brings a response of "Again? So what?" And that may be the saddest part of this book; human tragedy is reduced to being boring.


What the author fails to achieve in personality and depth, he makes up for in clichés. Concise and clear observations of events are rarely found...unless, of course, you want a history of every hurricane that has struck the Gulf Coast. This history the author feels is so important that he dedicates two chapters to the recitations; one chapter to document the loss of life for each storm and a second to document the loss of property.


As a resident of the Gulf Coast, a book such as this should hold considerable interest for me. Instead, it took me over two weeks to read the 195 small pages of narrative. I forced myself to finish just so I could justify the money that I spent.