Biloxi Casino Barge Article
Biloxi, Miss. — The giant floating casinos of Biloxi were known to gamblers from Louisiana to Alabama as “The Boats,” but when Hurricane Katrina came calling, they were more like floating battering rams.
They were huge, rudderless, rampaging monstrosities.
Ripped from their moorings by 145 mph winds and catapulted by 30-foot waves, many of Mississippi’s 13 coastal casinos crashed around like elephants in toy stores, smashing historic homes and buildings in Biloxi and Gulfport.
One look at the aftermath in Biloxi, a resort town of 50,644 on the Gulf of Mexico, makes it quite clear that the big casinos credited with saving the Mississippi economy did their part to help wreck the town.
“That sombitch smacked my building, swept all my merchandise and guns out, and pushed that safe clear across the parking lot,” said John Godsey, standing in the rubble that used to be his pawnshop and looking up at the wrecked Casino Magic right next to it in the parking lot. “This building would probably still be standing if the casino hadn’t hit it.”
It is perhaps a bit of an irony that as search and rescue teams arrived in the area Monday to look for victims and homeowners took in the damage for the first time, gambling competed with the ever-rising death toll as a major concern in Mississippi.
State legislators and gambling company operators are pushing to rescind the law in Mississippi requiring gambling to be on the water. The idea of the law, passed in 1990, was to allow riverboat gambling but prevent casinos from overrunning the state.
Instead of quaint card games on old ferries, however, huge casinos were built on barges in Biloxi and Gulfport, which became destination spots for hundreds of thousands, helping revive Mississippi’s economy in the 1990s. Casinos accounted for $2.7 billion in gambling revenue and $334 million in tax revenue this year.
And now that their “boats” have run aground, the casino operators want to put them on land permanently.
“All these casinos got blowed up into the woods and into houses,” said Paul Collins, an electrical contractor called in to survey the damage to the Palace Casino. “That’s costing the state half a million dollars a day. It’s a lot of money. You can be sure it ain’t gonna be long before they’re up and running again.”
The storm was clearly responsible for most of the damage in Biloxi, but the huge floating barges crashing around didn’t help.
The lavish Palace was lifted sideways onto a walkway, and the adjacent Sports Zone gambling hall cleared a path a half-mile inland. The east side of the city around its shell is a disaster zone, with splintered wood from former houses littered for miles.
The 134,500-square-foot Grand Casino Biloxi, the state’s largest coastal casino, cut a swath of wreckage across Highway 90 where one part wrecked the historic Hotel Tivoli and a museum under construction, and another part flattened apartments and homes.
Wildon Olier, 49, whose home was destroyed, said that five bodies had been found in a pancaked apartment and that three other tenants were missing. He was looking for his own brother, Tony, who fled from the apartments as the water surged and took refuge in the Tivoli.
“He was up in the second floor when he saw the Grand Casino come around the corner over that pier and start banging up against the hotel,” Olier said. “He ran up to the fourth floor with four other people and watched that barge smashing around back and forth.”
Olier said his brother survived but hadn’t been the same since.
“He’s still dinged out. That’s why I’m looking for him,” Olier said. “He’s going back and forth just wandering around pretty much aimlessly, trying to look for friends. We’re worried because he’s been through a traumatic ordeal.”
The Treasure Bay Casino, which looks like a pirate ship, also broke loose and ran aground, but the storm did most of the damage on the west side where it was moored.
The beachfront resort is utterly ravaged, with hotels, restaurants and resort centers crushed. Debris, including bumper cars and steel girders, litter Highway 90. The boardwalk is ripped up, and wood is scattered around. Litter covers the powdery white sand.
“It must have been quite a sight as that big pirate ship came loose and ran aground during the hurricane,” Collins said. “I’m glad I wasn’t there.”
Another barge wiped out the Biloxi Yacht Club.
Gambling has been a subject of debate in Mississippi for decades, ever since a casino opened during Prohibition on Dog Key Island.
The island, and the casino, eventually fell victim to the tides, but gambling kept growing in Biloxi and eventually replaced shrimping and oyster farming as the primary industry.
Gambling continued on the Gulf Coast through the 1950s and 1960s despite efforts by local ministers to stop it. Then, on Aug. 19, 1969, Hurricane Camille hit the Mississippi Coast. The gambling industry did not recover, tourism floundered, and the economy went into the dumps.
The casinos came back forcefully in 1990 when the Mississippi Legislature passed the Mississippi Gaming Control Act, allowing casinos in counties along the Mississippi River and the Gulf Coast. This year, the casinos employed almost 14,000 locals.
Efforts were already being made to repeal the rule forcing casinos to be on the water. A $235 million casino on pilings had been approved when Katrina hit. Like Camille, it is now threatening to change the gambling industry in Mississippi once again.
“Nobody envisioned something could happen like this,” Godsey said. “It’s heart-wrenching. It has cost the community so much.”
E-mail Peter Fimrite at pfimrite@sfchronicle.com.