04:54 PM CDT on Wednesday, August 31, 2005

Cain Burdeau / Associated Press

WAVELAND, MS -- Shell-shocked survivors wandered through the splinters of this town Wednesday, scavenging what they could from the homes and businesses that were completely washed away.

Hurricane Katrina obliterated Waveland, and state officials said it took a harder hit from the wind and water than any other town along the coast. The storm dragged away nearly every home and business within a half mile of the beach, leaving driveways and walkways to nowhere.

The town of 7,000 about 35 miles east of New Orleans has been partially cut off because the U.S. 90 bridge over the Bay of St. Louis was destroyed. Rescue workers there Wednesday found survivors in makeshift shelters, surviving off what they found in the rubble. The air smelled of natural gas, lumber and rotting flesh.

The storm surge left a few roofs intact but without the buildings attached to them. The water scattered random reminders of what had been normal, quiet lives: family photos, Barbie dolls, jazz records, whiskey bottles.

State officials would not confirm a death toll in the town, but Mayor Tommy Longo estimated that at least 50 residents died, The Clarion-Ledger reported.

Brian Mollere set up camp on the wreckage where his family's two-story home and jewelry store stood Sunday. With a couple of chairs and a sheet of plastic protecting him and his dog from the sun and spits of rain, the 50-year-old nonsmoker sucked on a Kool menthol and collected bottles of whiskey and Barq's root beer that had washed up nearby.

He recalled swimming out of the store with the dog as the water rose and finding shelter in a house that survived.

"If it had been night, I would have drowned," he said.

His 80-year-old mother did drown in this storm. She had evacuated with some family to a grocery store in neighboring Bay St. Louis. As family members swam away to escape the storm, his mother, who used an oxygen tank, stayed behind.

Waveland looks more like an empty development waiting for construction workers than a city. City Hall is gone, with nothing but a knee-high mural of a beach scene still standing.

"Total devastation. There's nothing left," said a cut and bruised Mollere.

The storm tore the clothes off of Mollere. On Wednesday, he wore shorts and a T-shirt he found in the debris.

His father was a local folk hero for being one of the few people to stay behind in Waveland during Hurricane Camille in 1969. Charles Brewster Mollere swam along and grabbed onto a white horse, and both were saved. The elder Mollere died in 1997.

On Wednesday, Jim Clack held the hand of his elderly mother, Mercedes Clack, and led her through the rubble of her Waveland home.

"You might fall, Mama," he said gently.

Mercedes Clack, blocking the glare with wraparound sunglasses, said: "Oh, that was a beautiful house. Remember it?"

She brightened when she found an antique radio and a few of her jazz records. "Do you think they can be salvaged?" she asked her son.

Sweaty, mud-caked survivors camped out in shopping center parking lots in Waveland and neighboring Bay St. Louis, some using tents or mattresses they had taken from stores. People lined up to get ice and bottled water distributed by emergency workers.

Frank Lombardo said he and his fiancee, Bridgette Favre, tried to weather the storm in their apartment, but moved to Bay High School in Bay St. Louis when the wind and rain grew too strong. He said he broke into the gym's football supply room to find cloth bandages to wrap some elderly people's wounds.

Marcel and Shannon Whavers and their 2-year-old daughter, Ayanna, stood Wednesday at the end of the devastated bridge that connected Bay St. Louis and Pass Christian. They said they felt cut off from the world.

"We're in trouble for a long time," said Shannon Whavers, 29.

"What are you going to do?" said Marcel Whavers, 30. "We saw a guy just lying in the highway, not knowing where to go."

(Copyright 2005 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)