/ Katrina Recovery

03:45 AM EDT on Friday, September 2, 2005

By BARBARA DAVIDSON / The Dallas Morning News

BILOXI, Miss. – Many people in this coastal city, which lies only 85 miles east of New Orleans, now feel as if it has slid off the face of the Earth.

As food and water supplies neared exhaustion on Thursday, frustrated residents repeatedly asked, "Why have they forgotten about us? Why aren't they coming to help us?"

The first hurricane relief shipments actually did reach the Mississippi Gulf Coast on Thursday, but the help was far short of what was needed and desperate residents pleaded for more.

At some distribution points, survivors of Katrina clapped, cheered and yelled, "Thank you, God!" when supply trucks showed up. At others, sheriff's deputies and National Guardsmen had to hold off a crush of people desperate for food and water.

When a Red Cross van stopped at a store in Pascagoula to ask for directions, it was swamped by residents begging for food. The driver obliged.

Some communities remained beyond the reach of outside help. With so much news media attention focused on New Orleans, some Mississippians worried that they'd been forgotten.

"Where are the police and National Guard?" Stan Tiner, the vice president and executive editor of Biloxi's The Sun Herald, asked in a column written for Friday's paper. "We wonder who will help us."

Many Biloxi residents found only meager help. Salvation Army disaster relief teams from Arkansas and Oklahoma set up a trailer in one residential neighborhood and dished out meals.

Eating spaghetti from a Styrofoam plate, lifelong resident James Kornman, 50, said, "When you don't have any money, you can't get out."

Underneath Interstate 10 at the western edge of town, workers on a pair of trucks handed out water and ice.

But with gasoline supplies exhausted, those who could not reach the food and water were left to fend for themselves. The water trucks were at least an hour's walk from the east side of town.

Damage is widespread along the coast, and the official death toll for Mississippi on Thursday had reached at least 126.

In Biloxi, local law enforcement patrolled the streets. Search teams from Tampa, Fla., Indianapolis and New York City helped local rescue workers search buildings, cars and trailers for survivors and bodies.

"Anybody staying in a house that's not safe, we're trying to get them to leave, but for many of them, where are they going to go?" said Capt. Tracy MacDonald of the Hillsborough County, Fla., Fire Department.

The National Guard still had only a spotty presence, although 6,000 National Guardsmen from throughout the country have received orders to report to the Mississippi coast, said Joe Spraggins, Harrison County's civil defense director.

As conditions in Biloxi deteriorated, reports of looting surfaced.

Resident Sam Armstead, 73, was asked what he was doing with a lawn mower he was pushing down the street. Mr. Armstead smiled and said, "God gave it to me," and continued on to his home nearby.

In Pascagoula, down the coast, the situation was not much better.

Authorities at the county fairgrounds and a few other sites were giving people only a one-day supply of food.

Signs posted everywhere warned: "You loot, we shoot." A handful of National Guard troops directed traffic and helped hand out food and water at the county fairgrounds.

Tempers ran short, especially in the competition for precious gasoline.

Lines were at least three-quarters of a mile long at one station on the town's outskirts. Not wanting to waste a drop of fuel, waiting drivers turned their engines off and pushed their cars ahead in line.

Pascagoula resident Richard Lucas, in his early 60s, had a house on Washington Street in a nice neighborhood near the beach. He and his wife, Mary, had lived there for 14 years.

"Every house around here is either flooded, gutted or gone," he said.

His was gone.

Staff writer Louis DeLuca, Knight Ridder Newspapers and The Associated Press contributed to this report.