Produced by the American Trucking Association to promote the role of its drivers in the recover effort, this film “Hurricane Camille, The Road Back” centers on the second-most devastating tropical cyclone Hurricane Camille that hit in August of 1969. It opens with footage of the destruction left in it’s wake (:49). Winds reached speeds of up to 200 mph and tides rose up to 30 feet (2:26). Of the worst hit areas included Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana and Virginia (2:39); the coast of Mississippi being the worst. Transportation means suffered greatly as ships were beached too high upon the shore (3:09), oil barges were also blown upon the shore (3:28), and railroads were knocked out of commission (3:39). As massive amounts of relief would be required, truck transports came to carry the majority of the burden (4:16). Donations of medicines, food and clothing began to arrive rapidly after the ‘all clear’ signal had been given (4:52). More than a thousand transports were delivered and some came from as far away as California (5:16). The responsibility for these deliveries fell upon the Mississippi Trucking Association (5:25). Temporary headquarters are installed in hangar 69 at the Gulfport Airport (5:31). In order to receive aide rapidly, all restrictions on certain types of vehicles for highway use was lifted (6:01). The chairman of the Mississippi Public Service Commission (6:58), is recorded commending the trucking facilities for speedy aide and allowing various use of trucks such as the refrigerator trucks as temporary morgues. While the beginning scenes had come from Mississippi, an equally devastated area was Nelson county Virginia (8:49). As the James River flooded, more than 100 had perished and again transportation systems hindered (8:57). The trucking industry bore a loss of over two million dollars (9:36). At Buena Vista Motel, the mayor speaks of the speed of the trucking industry’s assistance in their time of need (9:58). The official thank you is delivered by Governor John Bell Williams from his temporary post in Gulfport (12:34). It would require years of work to rebuild after Hurricane Camille (13:57). The film concludes with a dedication to the workers and others a part of the relief support during the devastation.

Hurricane Camille was the second-most intense tropical cyclone to strike the United States on record. The most intense storm of the 1969 Atlantic hurricane season, Camille formed as a tropical depression on August 14 south of Cuba from a long-tracked tropical wave. Despite weakening slightly on August 17, the hurricane quickly re-intensified back to a Category 5 before it made landfall in Waveland, Mississippi early on August 18 with a pressure of 900 mbar (26.58 in Hg). This was the second-lowest pressure recorded for a U.S. landfall. As Camille pushed inland, it quickly weakened and was a tropical depression by the time it was over the Ohio Valley. Once it emerged offshore, it was able to restrengthen to a strong tropical storm, before it became extratropical, being absorbed by a cold front over the North Atlantic on August 22.Camille caused tremendous damage in its wake, and also produced a peak official storm surge of 24 feet (7.3 m). The hurricane flattened nearly everything along the coast of the U.S. state of Mississippi, and caused additional flooding and deaths inland while crossing the Appalachian Mountains of Virginia. In total, Camille killed 259 people and caused $1.42 billion (1969 USD, equivalent to $9.48 billion 2017 USD) in damages. To date, a complete understanding of the reasons for the system’s power, extremely rapid intensification over open water and strength at landfall has not been achieved.

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This film is part of the Periscope Film LLC archive, one of the largest historic military, transportation, and aviation stock footage collections in the USA. Entirely film backed, this material is available for licensing in 24p HD and 2k. For more information visit http://www.PeriscopeFilm.com