The survivors: Three days after Hurricane Katrina punched its way through this Gulf Coast town, rewriting lives and redrawing neighbourhoods, Joe Reeves and Pat Rutland emerged from their battered home in search of something to eat.
The only thing emergency workers could offer was the promise that help was on the way.
For Mr Reeves and Ms Rutland, the promise was hollow: the roar of Katrina's waters has been replaced by sweltering nights. Homes lie in shambles everywhere.
The outside world keeps promising aid, but it never seems to arrive.
"It's been four days since there has been any food here," Ms Rutland (46) exclaimed. "I can't understand it. We can't live off just water."
Frustration and fatigue replaced shock among hurricane survivors in Mississippi. Poor sanitation and decomposing bodies threatened outbreaks of disease. Electricity, telephone service and plumbing remained distant dreams.
Federal and state officials said they were racing to clear roads, restore power and rescue trapped people.
About 12,300 refugees state-wide are in shelters, and more than 881,000 residents are without power.
"Even though there are huge resources being expended, it just takes a while in order to get momentum going," said Scott Hamilton, a spokesman for the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency in Jackson. "It is now flowing, and we are making improvements every hour and every day."
Mr Hamilton said a state-wide death toll was not yet available. He said thousands of rescues had occurred.
Most of the destruction, and presumably most of the deaths, were in Mississippi's southern counties, which bore the brunt of the hurricane's fury.
Officials said the death toll in Harrison, Hancock, Jackson and Pearl River Counties stood at 100 as of Wednesday night.
Gary Hargrove, Harrison County's coroner, said bodies had been recovered from collapsed buildings, on top of debris, along the coastline and on inland waterways, and that more corpses were being found. He asked residents who find corpses to leave them alone to prevent the spread of disease, and to inform authorities.
"People have been washed out to waterways and in woodlands," Hargrove said. "There have not been any large masses of bodies recovered from any one location. We are finding some families together. They are scattered over an area, but they are not piled up in one place."
Harrison County officials said about 6,000 National Guard troops from other states were expected to trickle in over the next few days.
Mr Hamilton said Mississippi's highways are finally clear of debris, with a couple of exceptions, including state Highway 90, which runs along the coast.
"It doesn't mean all the roads are open to the public, but emergency units have more capacity to travel," he said.
Fifty miles of coastline in Harrison, Jackson and Hancock Counties suffered about 90 per cent destruction, Mr Hamilton said. "There is no other area of the state that has sustained that kind of destruction."
In parts of Gulfport, Biloxi and several smaller communities, power poles still leaned precariously over roads, business signs lay in tatters on the ground, and billboards and trees were toppled into houses.
Thousands of people lined up at distribution centres for water and ice, while others travelled the streets in search of open stores and petrol stations. For many survivors, some of whom lacked money to flee town, the primary concern was dwindling stocks of food.
"We had a few canned goods and bread and peanut butter, but we're about out of it now," said Reeves (53) a maintenance worker at a nursing home. "We've got water, but that won't last long. With no air conditioning we're burning up at night. We can't sleep."
Survivors have been forced to be resourceful. Mr Reeves and Ms Rutland stashed buckets beneath the downspouts of their home's gutters during a rainstorm, collecting enough water to flush their toilets and take sponge baths. Before that they had been bathing in a nearby saltwater creek, which carried unique risks.
"You've got to watch out for snakes," said Charles Reeves (31), a carpet layer.
Thousands of other residents in Harrison County had similar predicaments. Most mobile phone service is down, and regular telephone lines are out. While a few bank branches opened to allow people to get cash, ATMs depend on electricity and tele-
communications systems, so they were unusable. Most businesses were closed anyway. Petrol was scarce, and people queued for hours at the few stations that were open.
There have been reports of gunshots, and looting and lawlessness at night. Authorities have imposed a curfew from 6pm to 6am, but enforcing it is only one of the many things on a list that includes looking for people still trapped in the rubble and ensuring roads are made passable.
One immediate problem was cleaning up several tonnes of rotting chicken strewn over parts of the west side of Gulfport, officials said.
The poultry had been frozen and packed in shipping containers, but Katrina scattered them.
The nearby city of D'Iberville faced a similar problem, with one million pounds of raw shrimp that was tossed from containers now littering the port waters there.