DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE

Federal Bureau of Investigation

A special Bureau identification team from Washington, D.C. assisted the coroner of Harrison County, Mississippi in the processing of 30 unidentified victims. In addition, Special Agents in Gulfport handled 62 requests for assistance in locating possible victims.

Immigration and Naturalization Service

Two border patrol inspectors based in Gulfport participated in search and rescue operation and escorted supply convoys in the immediate aftermath of Camille. They later provided transportation for federal, state and local officials engaged in relief operations. They were supported by a patrol inspector in New Orleans who shuttled to them gas, water and other supplies necessary for them to remain in operation.

U. S. Marshals Office

The Marshal for Gulfport and three of his deputies found quarters for and safeguarded the families of two U.S. judges whose homes were destroyed in Gulfport and Bay St. Louis. This was done while the judges were hearing school desegregation cases in Jackson.

While salvaging court records and books from the U.S. District Court in Gulfport, the Marshal also searched for and located relatives of Senator Eastland.

POST OFFICE DEPARTMENT

Two post offices were destroyed, in Pass Christian and
Waveland. Trailers, from which temporary operations were
conducted, were positioned near the destroyed structures.
Services in both communities, as well as areas from
Alabama into Louisiana, were restored by September 2.

Damages and the emergency steps taken to maintain services
are estimated to have cost between $100,000 to $150,000.

DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR

U. S. Geological Survey

Geological Survey crews were dispatched on gas and oil industry damage assessment missions as soon as Camille had passed. At present, Survey oil and gas supervisors are permitting companies which lost tanks, oil wells or other equipment to make temporary arrangements for continued production. These include relocating offshore structures until destroyed facilities are rebuilt.

Survey hydrologists are preparing a hydrographic atlas depicting the flooding caused by Hurricane Camille in Mississippi. They have found that tidal floods exceeded 21 feet above mean sea-level in some places. That is six feet above the previous record high, measured in September of 1947. A portion of the atlas will locate artesian wells which could serve as emergency water supplies in the absence of power for pumping.

Bureau of Commercial Fisheries

Bureau experts report extensive damages to fishing facilities and probable severe destruction of oyster reefs as a result of Camille. The estimated capital investment loss to the fishing industry along the Gulf Coast is about $5 million; repair or replacement costs are expected to exceed $8 million. However, all operators, with the exception of one, intend to rebuild their plants.

Inventory losses of canned shrimp and oysters may exceed $2 million if salvage operations involving some 200,000 cases prove unsuccessful. The Food and Drug Administration of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare will determine the operation's success after a suitable period for incubation of possible organisms.

Damage to commercial fishing vessels was minimal, according to Bureau surveyors. Only seven vessels were beached, and these received only minor damage. However, an unknown number of small skiffs probably are destroyed, but an accurate count has not been obtained.

To assist the commercial fishing industry in its recovery, the Bureau is coordinating Inventory Loss Prevention Loans from the Small Business Administration. The Navy, at the request of the Bureau, has refloated several of the stranded vessels.

"Operation Grubs take," a program to return hard-hit fishermen to operation, is being sponsored by the American Red Cross, the Standard Oil Marketing Division, and the Pascagoula Ice and Freezing Company. Grubs take is

providing vessels of affected operators with fuel, oil, ice and food needed to resume fishing operations.

Economic loss is enormous to communities primarily dependent on income from the commercial fisheries. The Bureau concludes that the total impact probably will never be accurately determined because of unknown factors related to the expected income loss from oyster production, the value of lost processed products for 1969 and 1970, and the temporary loss of employment affecting the community's payrolls.

Federal Water Pollution Control Administration

The FWPCA dispatched a mobile laboratory and five operators to the Gulf Coast as the storm forged into Mississippi. FWPCA personnel were also requested to operate a packaged sewage treatment plant, to locate debris disposal sites, to locate disinfectants to be used for sewage bypassed around inoperable treatment plants and to prescribe pesticides for pest control which are least harmful to human and aquatic life.

The FWPCA was faced with oil pollution problems in the Lower Mississippi River, where some 2,000 barrels of crude oil were lost from a tank farm and covering levees from Boothville to Venice. At their advice, vacuum equipment and straw was used to clean up the oil.

The Middle Atlantic Region of the FWPCA was alerted to the emergency condition in Virginia's Tye River, possibly carrying pesticides and herbicides from a plant at Massies Mill, Virginia, struck by a flash flood.

Also in Virginia, survey teams reported that water and sewer systems at Lexington, Buena Vista and Glasgow had received heavy damages. Water systems were restored to service and the sewage treatment plants at Lexington and Glasgow are being repaired.

DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE

Insect infestations were a major threat along the Gulf
Coast. USDA deployed over 60 men, using 10 jeep mounted
insecticide sprayers and many items of individual equipment
to kill flies, mosquitoes and other pests. At last count,
114 drums of malathion have been used to kill insect larvae
and pupae. During the peak treatment period, seven Air
Force planes were spraying insects in the storm area.
USDA spread 100,000 pounds of donated Mirex poison bait to
control fire ants infesting over 75,000 acres.

Consumer and Marketing Service

To date, an estimated 4,687,000 pounds of surplus Department
food has been used by victims of Hurricane Camille. As
many as 30 USDA nutrition specialists have been working at
one time with local authorities in feeding storm victims.

Forest Service

USFS personnel are working with state officials and private
industry along the Gulf Coast to help salvage as much as
1-1/2 billion board feet of severely damaged timber and
control proliferation of timber destroying insects. The
501,000 acre DeSoto National Forest near Biloxi, Mississippi
was the hardest-hit national forestland with 6,000 acres
containing 90 million board feet of badly damaged timber.
A total of 3,000 acres will have to be cleared and planted
or seeded. At the Waynesboro, Virginia George Washington
National Forest a heavy loss of life among a large
population of campers probably was avoided by middle-of-the-
night warning patrols by Forest Service personnel.

Rural Electrification Administration

REA made $2.3 million in emergency loan funds immediately
available to four cooperative rural electric systems to
speed temporary power to their service areas blacked out by
the storm. Another $6.3 million in REA loans has been
approved to enable three of those cooperatives to install
permanent lines and equipment to replace those destroyed
by Camille.

Farmers Home Administration

Recent estimates indicate that more than $8 million in disaster loans will be needed in four states to restore rural homes and farms damaged by Camille. Mississippi will require at least $7 million in emergency farm credit, with an additional $650,000 needed in Virginia, $500,000 in

Louisiana, and $100,000 in West Virginia. So far, the Administration has accepted about 150 applications for emergency loans from throughout the hard-hit areas. Almost all are applications for housing loans at three percent. To date, 10 housing loans amounting to $109,720, and five farm emergency operating loans at three percent have been made. The agency probably will receive well over 200 more loan applications from the Gulf Coast area alone. Residents of 33 Mississippi counties, 25 Virginia counties, four Louisiana parishes, and one West Virginia county have been designated as eligible for these loans by Secretary of Agriculture Hardin.

Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service

The Service has extended emergency grazing privileges on reserve cropland taken out of production in 15 Mississippi counties and 12 counties in Virginia and made 29 car-loads of emergency feed available from warehouses. Emergency funds for cost-sharing payments allocated by ASCS State Committees for farmland clean-up, fence building, and conservation structure restoration totaled $300,000 in Mississippi and $750,000 in Virginia.

Soil Conservation Service

Affected landowners have been assisted by SCS personnel on disaster relief projects. Salaries for this effort total $195,000 to date. Thirty Service employees are working full time with the Governor's Forest Disaster Salvage Council to aid landowners in a 19-county area in Mississippi in salvaging timber and in replanting ravaged areas. SCS employees have interviewed over a thousand Mississippi landowners on timber damages and possible harvests to get information for state forestry officials and advise landowners. Existing small watershed project structures in Virginia are credited with helping save lives of numerous campers and hold down flood damage costs.