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Alex Cabrero reporting from Biloxi, Mississippi While New Orleans has been getting most of the attention in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, other small towns, such as Biloxi, Mississippi, were also hit hard.
The scene is similar on just about every block of the town: Pieces of debris, fallen trees, and personal belongings strewn everywhere. Even though Biloxi has become mostly a pile of debris, people still call it home.
Randy Flowers, Biloxi, Miss. Resident: “It crippled. It’s crippled right now.”
Even with everything he lost, Biloxi resident Randy Flowers is one of the lucky ones.
Randy Flowers, Biloxi, Miss. Resident: “Basically we survived. That’s about all I can say.”
He knows it was a close call when the hurricane hit the Gulf of Mexico Sunday night and took down almost everything.
Randy Flowers, Biloxi, Miss. Resident: “It looks like looking at Hiroshima photos from World War II.”
Scary, but true; Biloxi is pretty much a debris field right now. There is damage everywhere: Broken sidewalks, roads homes.
Jorge Chavarria, Biloxi, Miss. Resident: “We were thinking, ‘What are we going to do?’
One of those damaged homes belonged to Jorge Chavarria.
Jorge Chavarria, Biloxi, Miss. Resident: “We have no food, no water. Nothing. I lost all my clothes, my car, everything.”
The damage was so bad the Chavarria family moved out onto the front yard. The family uses a campfire to cook food.
Marciano Loyo, Biloxi, Miss. Resident: “We ask some people if they had showers, and they said ‘No, our houses have been destroyed.”
Randy Flowers, Biloxi, Miss. Resident: “I imagine that at one point, we had wind gusts that were over one hundred and fifty miles per hour.”
You can’t even imagine it. Flowers lived through it, and he still can’t.
Randy Flowers, Biloxi, Miss. Resident: “We’ve stayed for every hurricane, and ridden out every hurricane since 1992 here on the coast, and figured this one would be very similar, if not the same. There’s nothing. Just total devastation.”
Biloxi firefighters spent part of the day going door to door looking for anyone who may have been trapped. They only found bodies.
Electricity is still non-existent, and it could be another month until it is restored.
