According to the following exerpt from an online article, Camile in 1969 was not nearly as bad as I remember. Maybe this lends a lot of creedence to the posters on this board who are telling people that just because you THINK you have lived through a cat. 1,2,3,4,5 cane your local conditions may be very different than the eyewall. I don't know if the damage was due tornadoes or if I simply was so scared that I overestimated the damage or if the wind meters in Pascagoula simply went off before the worst of the storm came in. I only know that if 81 mph were all we sustained in Pascagoula I never want to go through a true cat 2,3,4, or 5 storm. 
Tim
Accurate wind measurements are almost impossible to obtain in a hurricane of Camille's intensity. Based on reconnaissance flight level winds and measured surface pressure, maximum surface winds were calculated at 175 knots (201.5 miles per hour), close to the center, early on the afternoon of the 17th. This calculation represents the maximum winds ever observed in a hurricane and based on something other than pure estimation. The Labor Day Hurricane of 1935 may have had more severe winds, but there is just no way of telling.
The highest actual measurement on a wind instrument was found on an Easterline Angus wind speed recorder which had been left running on a Tranworld Drilling Company rig located east of Boothville (Maine Pass Block 29). The recorder had been switched to double scale before evacuation and recorded an extreme gust of 172 miles per hour before the paper jammed and the trace was lost. An Air National Guard Weather Flight stationed at Gulfport Municipal Airport, estimated sustained winds in excess of 100 miles per hour and gust of 150-175 miles per hour. Other less reliable reports from the Gulport-Bay St. Louis area indicated winds of 150-200 miles per hour. At Boothville, Louisiana, 107 mile per hour gusts were recorded before a power failure; at Pillottown, Louisiana, the SS CRISTOBAL estimated winds at 160 miles per hour.
Winds at Biloxi (Keesler Air Force Base) were measured at 81 miles per hour with gusts to 129 miles her hour late on the 17th. At Ingalls Shipyard in Pascagoula the highest sustained wind reached 81 miles per hour while a local radio station reported 104 mile per hour winds before a power failure.
West of the storm center hurricane force winds reached only the eastern edge of New Orleans; brief gusts of 60-85 miles per hour extended over most of the city. Eastern sections of St. Tammany and Washington Parishes were swept by intense winds estimated up to 160 miles per hour in gusts at Slidell and up to 130 miles per hour in gusts at Bogalusa and Angie.
Hurricane force winds were confined close to the storm's center as it move inland. These winds extended from east of New Orleans to Pascagoula, while gusts of hurricane force winds extended along the coast from New Orleans to just west of Mobile Bay and inland to just south of Jackson
Hurricane Camille ranks high as one of the most destructive killer storms ever to hit the U.S. Total damage has been estimated at $1.42 billion with 258 deaths and 68 additional persons missing -- this includes the Gulf Coast and the Virginias. In round figures, the damage equals the destruction caused by Hurricane Betsy, in a much more concentrated area, in September of 1965. Betsy and Camille stand together as the two most destructive storms to ever ravage the U.S.
While most of Betsy's damage was incurred by Louisiana, Camille spent most of her wrath in Mississippi; the total figure there is estimated at $950 million; Louisiana suffered $350 million mostly in lower Plaquemines Parish.
The total U.S. deaths figure was 258 with three persons reported dead in Cuba. The U.S. figure is the highest in a hurricane since 390 persons died during Hurricane Audrey, which moved over western Louisiana in June 1957; most of these deaths, like those in Camille, were drownings.
Camille ripped a swath of destruction along the entire length of the Mississippi coast up to three or four blocks inland. She also destroyed some inland areas such as resedential sections of West Gulfport and the Biloxi suburb of D'Iberville. In low areas the rows of houses stopped a block or two from the beach and beyond a row of debris were bare foundations along the beach front. From Pascagoula to Pass Christian, and to a lesser degree farther east and west, piles of lumber, building materials and trees were thrown together by the surge. In some cases, piles of debris extended for more than a block square. Highway 90, the main coastal thoroughfare, was covered with sand in many sections and completely washed away in other sections. About one-third of the Bay St. Louis Bridge and one-half of the Biloxi-Ocean Springs Bridge were damaged when tides lifted the spans off their supports. The Army Corps of Engineers indicated that to make some 530 miles of roads passable, about 100,000 tons of debris had to be cleared away. Mr. M. James Stevens, Vice-President of the Mississippi Resteraunt Association, reported that the Coast's resort industry suffered the worst disaster of any similar recreation area in the world. Along U.S. 90, in the Biloxi area, some 60 resort properties suffered damage with about one-half of them destroyed. Buildings on high knolls of about 20 feet or more were able to weather the high winds and survive the storm surge. Many buildings at the 10 feet level were crushed.
At Clermont Harbor, the destruction was total, and eastward to Bay St. Louis many hundreds of beach homes were destroyed. Henderson Point in the Pass Christian area was completely destroyed except for an old building that was formerly a maritime academy. In the Gulfport harbor, damage was severe. Three large cargo ships, the ALAMO VICTORY, the HULDA, and the SILVER HAWK were badly damaged and washed high aground at the north end of the harbor. At the banana wharf, all the sheet metal was stripped from the structures, but most of the framework was intact. On the west side of the harbor, most of the damage was to the lower walls of the buildings where the battering-ram effect of floating cargo carried the sides away. A large diesel fuel barge lifted out of the harbor, carried ashore, and deposited on the medial strip of U.S. 90. Farther up the beach was a large oil storage tank that had floated several miles from its original position.
The beautiful, modern marina fronting the Broadwater Beach Hotel at Biloxi appeared to be intact, but at close inspection the molded concrete covers over the boat slips had corners and pieces broken off by floating debris in the high water. Buildings along the waterfront were demolished and most of the boats were either sunk or had been washed away.
At Pascagoula's Ingalls Shipyard the large cargo ship, MORMACSUN, under construction, broke its moorings and was carried by a 12 foot rise of water onto high ground.
In Hancock County most residents live in low-lying areas. In the hamlets of Lakeshore, Clermont Park, Pearlington, Ansley and the Cedar Point seection of Bay St. Louis, destruction was almost complete. Storm surges of 15 feet and higher and devastating winds turned beach houses into stacks of driftwood. At the Mississippi Test Facility, southeast of Picayune, some 1600 refugees took shelter Sunday night (17th). The high winds and water knocked down some overhead powerlines and flooded the underground lines. Emergency generators were put into use but operations at the facility were suspended until Tuesday.
In Pearl River County there was an estimated $35-40 million loss from damage. The county agent said that about 85 percent of the dairy barns in the county were either severely damaged or were a complete loss. About 35,000-40,000 acres or bearing tung trees were destroyed. There was an additional loss in timber and heavy damage was inflicted on the pecan crop. In Poplarville, the county seat, the mayor estimated that about 90 percent of the homes sustained damage in varying degrees.
There was electric power failure throughout 14 counties, from the coast to as far north as Simpson County. In some sections this loss lasted for several days. The South Mississippi Power Company had to almost completely rebuild their distribution system, and their transmission network was badly damaged. Camille's effects were also devastating on telephone service. Of Mississippi's 765,000 telephones, approximately 15 percent were out of service. In the Gulf Coast area this figure jumped to 67 percent.
The U.S. Forest Service made an aerial survey over a 14 county area of southern Mississippi, an area of 3.8 million acres, which revealed that about 1.9 million acres of commercial forest land in 12 counties received varying degrees of damage. Observations from the air indicated that hardwood forests suffered somewhat heavier damage than pine forests. Some of the hardwood forests were completely defoliated by severe winds. The Forest Service estimates damage to Mississippi sawtimber at 1.8 billion board feet and to pulpwood at 1.4 million cords.
Damage in Louisian was confined mainly to southeastern sections with some damage in the eastern part of the state. The storm surge generated by Camille swept the area from Empire southward clean. Most structures in this area, including some that had survived hurricane Betsy, were completely demolished by the combination of wind and water. The tidal surge also flooded some parts of lower St. Bernard Parish and eastern sections of Orlean Parish. Camille's intense winds were unusually small in areal extent, particularly to the west of the center. Damage in these areas was generally minor. However, eastern sections of St. Tammany and Washington Parishes were swept by intense winds and heavy rainfall (4-6 inches), and the heavily forrested area received considerable damage. Extensive property damage resulted from trees falling on homes and businesses, utility lines and roads.
Agricultural and timber losses, including 8,000 heads of cattle.
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