Eleven of the 14 house guests staying at Gary and Amy Haygood’s gather around the television to watch the latest coverage of Hurricane Ivan Wednesday afternoon after arriving in town early that morning. Fifteen more guests arrived, for a total of 29 guests and 33 people in the home that night. (Brian LodenThe Vicksburg Post)

[9/16/04]As fast as Vicksburg filled with refugees Tuesday and Wednesday, it was emptying today.

Among the impromptu visitors was a Bay St. Louis woman who has weathered hurricanes on the Mississippi Gulf Coast since 1947. Ivan got her attention, she said, and she evacuated for the first time.

Annabelle Fayard, 84, was one of 29 people from the coast area who took shelter in the home of her daughter, Amy Haygood, and her family.

The group was among the thousands of evacuees who stayed in private homes, motels, bed and breakfasts, RV parks, tents and Red Cross shelters in the area.

Fayard said she had lived in the same house near the Gulf of Mexico for 57 years and that it had been damaged by at least two of the three strong hurricanes that had struck during that time: a hurricane that hit in 1947, before hurricanes were named; Hurricane Betsy in 1965; and Hurricane Camille in 1969.

“We rebuilt every time,” Fayard said, adding that her husband was a construction contractor but that he has died since the last rebuilding.

“We don’t have Daddy anymore so I don’t know what we’re going to do,” said her daughter, Debbie Collier, also of Bay St. Louis.

The group left the coast late Tuesday, traveling north in four vehicles, Collier said. At least two of them got caught in heavy traffic.

“It took us seven to eight hours to make a three-hour drive,” said Mike Beck, 33, of Biloxi.

Beck said he works for Mississippi Power and would travel back to the coast this morning, planning to report for his next work shift at noon.

Beck said his home is only about 150 yards from the Gulf and that he took steps to protect it.

“I spent about a day and a half getting everything battened down and boarded up,” Beck said of his home.

Friends of the Haygoods had donated cots for many of the guests, about 14 of whom arrived in the wee hours of Wednesday morning after a slow journey north and thus spent much of the morning asleep. About 15 more guests arrived later in the day, for a total of 33 people in the three-bedroom home with an upstairs loft.

Thirteen other members of the extended family remained behind, at a home in Diamondhead, north of Interstate 10, Collier said.

“We were torn as to what to do,” Collier said of making the trip. “We were deciding, Should we stay behind in Diamondhead?'”

Collier’s main thoughts as some members of the group watched coverage of the hurricane on television Wednesday afternoon was of those family members closer to Ivan’s predicted path.

“I’ve got a granddaughter, a grandson, three sons and a husband left behind,” she said. “They’re what can’t be replaced.”

In the four public shelters that opened in churches in Warren County, American Red Cross director Beverly Connelly said the count was 565 people.

Police Chief Tommy Moffett said traffic into town on U.S. 61 and Interstate 20 was still heavy between around 5 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.

Today, “The concern in the shelter is, When can we go home?'” said L.W. Callaway, director of the Warren County Emergency Management Office. “That will be a determination that will be made in their home area. If it’s not safe, they’re not going to allow them to go back.”

At the shelters Salvation Army volunteers served food and Mississippi Department of Human Services workers handled registration duties. All were there to help make the displaced people as comfortable as they could.

“I got so much positive feedback on how this community in itself welcomed all these evacuees,” Connelly said. “They said they could not have been treated any better.”

Shelters would probably begin shutting down late this afternoon, with evacuees who remained being consolidated at First Baptist Church.

Parking spaces at Riverfront Park, Halls Ferry Park and City Park were made available for recreational-vehicle parking and such vehicles could also be seen parked in private lots all around the city.

As damage assessments were done this morning along the coast, about 39 volunteers who work at the Engineer Research and Development Center of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers were on standby to respond, public affairs officer Wayne Stroupe said.

Employees of the Corps of Engineers’ Mississippi Valley Division were arriving in Central Mississippi to support Federal Emergency Management Agency operations along the coast.

Teams, including Vicksburg-based Corps employees, were forming to help provide ice and water, restore power, housing and roofing and to handle debris removal and logistics in support of those operations. About 100 trucks each of water and ice were waiting at the Mississippi Fairgrounds in Jackson for further orders from FEMA, Vicksburg District public affairs officer Frank Worley said.

Some New Orleans-based Corps emergency-operations personnel were moved to Vicksburg during the hurricane.

In Port Gibson, a young couple from Pensacola, Fla., came into Conn’s True Value Hardware on Church Street and got an unexpectedly kind reception to the town.

“They said they had been driving for two days and couldn’t find a place to take a shower,” said store employee Velma Lee. “So we got busy on the phone trying to find them a place to stay.”

The couple, a woman who was in the military and a man who had recently gotten out of the military, ended up staying at the Bernheimer House bed-and-breakfast inn.

Lee went to pay for the couple’s first night’s stay there, and did so over the couple’s protests.

“They said, You don’t have to do that,'” Lee said. “And I said, Listen, you could be my child off somewhere and needing some help.'”

Later another employee of the store, Bonnie Allement, went to the inn and paid for a second night’s stay for the couple.

The inn’s co-owner Loren Ouart, said he had discounted all his rooms by 15 percent for the evacuees, made an exception to his inn’s rule in allowing a family of six to stay in one room and opened his inn’s restaurant to other hurricane evacuees who had sought shelter in the area, including guests of motels without restaurants. All other hotel rooms in the seat of 11,800-resident Claiborne County appeared to be taken, as were those at every other bed-and-breakfast in the state, said Ouart.