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BILOXI, Miss.***........Searching rubble

Everywhere along the coast, people searched the rubble among fallen trees, downed power lines and smashed cars and appliances. They'd stop, bend down, reach into debris, come up with a piece of something and move on.

Mrs. Pitts, 47, cradled a cookie jar in the shape of a rabbit that she'd recovered in the remains of her home in the Point Cadet area. Inside, a small tennis shoe, a memento of her 19-year-old son's childhood, the only personal things left.

Alternately weepy and strong, she tried to make sense of it all. "This was the home that we created ... and there was nothing we could do. This is just the fury of Mother Nature," she said. "And I'm trying hard to realize that all of this devastation is in God's plan."

All she had left, she said, was a car and a dog, named Prissy. She wasn't even sure about her job as a nail technician. "Do you think people are going to be having their nails done?" she said with sardonic laugh.

Kimberly Ras and Steve Howard, both table game dealers at the Imperial Palace Casino, were worried about their jobs, too, as they picked through the remains of her apartment in a demolished old house further west on Beach Boulevard.

She had ridden out the storm at the apartment of Mr. Howard, her boyfriend, on the inland side of Biloxi, and they were looking mainly for pictures of her two children, 16 and 13, who live in Michigan.

Moving on
The casino, located away from the beachfront, appeared to have escaped major damage but "is closed until further notice," she said. "We've got unemployment and FEMA [the Federal Emergency Management Agency], but it won't make up for everything."

"Keep your options open," Mr. Howard said, suggesting they might have to leave the area to find work.

Not far away, two men in a pickup stopped to recover a vanity top laying undamaged amid the debris. It wasn't theirs, they said, but one of the men said he was a preacher and his demolished church could use it.

"This will be a blessing to the church," said Bishop D. Bruce Nelson of the Lighthouse Holiness Apostolic Holiness Church, who said the storm was God's way of getting the attention of a society preoccupied with unholy things.

"He's got His way of bringing us back to Him," Mr. Nelson said.

Ida Pungo, who said prayer and faith helped her ride out the storm in her Beach Boulevard apartment, was unbowed. She hung an American flag out front and announced plans for a Mardi Gras party next year.

"We'll be here," she said. "I'll cook gumbo. We'll have a jazz band. And everybody eats, drinks and parties all day long." ..........***

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