Casinos of Destruction

Mississippians paid the price for their state's peculiar laws about gambling when Hurricane Katrina struck. The law allows only "riverboat" gambling, which in practice means that casinos are built up upon large, rudderless barges permanently moored on the waterfront.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that when Katrina made landfall, the storm surge and ferocious winds tore casino barges from their moorings and washed them ashore, causing substantial damage:

"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." ...

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.

If the law had allowed casinos to be built on solid ground, the damage in Biloxi, severe though it was, would have been substantially lessened.