35 years ago the MS National Guard & LARCs Saved Hundreds Of Lives

[merh]

LARCs Saved Hundreds Of Lives

The amphibious vessel LARC, to be dedicated Tuesday, sits in front of Biloxi's seafood museum. During Hurricane Camille, the building was the headquarters for the Mississippi National Guard's 138th Transportation Battalion. Wallace Farragut, the logistics officer, says, "We kinda gauged what we were supposed to do based on what we heard but we had no idea the intensity of the wake, of that water comin' across, the damage. No one could anticipate that, it was amazing."

Wallace Farragut and the company commander, Glenn Ryan, were in charge of getting the guardsmen and the LARCS where they were supposed to be. The crews evacuated nearly 300 people from Camille's raging waters. Farragut documented their stories. "It was rescues from all angles...from tree tops, telephone poles, attics. It was unbelievable," Farragut says.

Ryan and other battalion members who stayed in the building to guard equipment soon found themselves forced out by high water too. Lucky for them, one LARC was available. Ryan says, "I wound up having to use the one here, yeah, for us, not to help anybody else but to get us outta here." With water up to their necks, Ryan says their only other choice was to swim. "I guess we probably could have swam our way out behind the building to Myrtle which was also covered with water and down where the Palace is now there was about ten feet of water. So, yeah, what could we have done."

(snip)

24 awards were given to the guardsmen who saved people. Wallace Farragut says that's the most ever given in peace time, to a single unit of the Mississippi National Guard.

http://www.wlox.com/global/story.asp?s=2181353&ClientType=Printable

[merh]

1. August 17, 1969 - Hurricane Camille

Hurricane Camille is said to be the worst storm ever to hit mainland United States. With winds in excess of 200 mph and tides over 20 feet, Hurricane Camille smashed into the Mississippi Gulf Coast on Sunday night, the 17th of August and continued its devastating path until the early hours of Monday, the 18th.
http://www.maritimemuseum.org/camille/

With wind gusts estimated at over 230 mph, the hurricane demolished nearly everything in its path. What the winds did not level, the crashing waves of the storm surge did. Water some 27 feet above normal sea levels in places rushed inland as Camille came ashore. On top of the huge surge, the highest ever recorded in the United States, wave heights reached 30 to 35 feet battering everything in their path. Camille killed 256 people in the United States. 143 along the Gulf Coast and an additional 113 in the Appalachians, where its remnants caused massive flooding in the days that followed. In 1969, weather reports on television were much different than they are today. The general public did not have access to satellite images, so people didn't have any idea of the monster that was coming at them. This according to Dr. Steve Lyons, the Tropical Weather expert at the Weather Channel. Camille caused more than $1.4 billion in damage from the Gulf Coast to the Appalachians. Mississippi absorbed the brunt of Camille's destruction. The hurricane decimated the state's entire coast with destruction stretching 3 to 4 blocks inland. Roadways were impassable and several bridges, including the Bay St. Louis Bridge and the Biloxi-Ocean Springs Bridge were severely damaged by the rushing water
http://www.angelfire.com/ms3/n5ycn/camille.html

[Rowdyboy]

2. I remember it very well...Even 120 miles inland (Laurel) we had

winds clocked at 126 miles per hour. Tornados downed trees and powerlines everywhere. I can only begin to imagine what the experience on the coast was like.

Hopefully, we'll never see Camille's like again. I read recently that winds reached 253 mph at one point. Simply incredible.

[merh]

3. Fortunately for me, my family lived inland a few miles north of

the railroad tracks and above the title surge. But I vividly recall the night of the storm, how the winds howled and I remember walking to the beach the next day to see the highway torn up with sections missing and homes gone.

I pray we don't have one like that again, and since the LARC's are not used/manufactured any longer and the Guard is not really available because they are involved in other matters, I hope we don't have one during the * admin.