When Hurricane Georges hit land again in Jackson County, Mississippi, on September 26 after passing through Key West, roofs were broken and carpets ruined at all seven county library branches, but the worst damage occurred at the Jackson-George Regional Headquarters Library in Pascagoula. According to the library's public relations specialist William Johnson, the building was "soaked by the storm with water coming in on all sides."
None of the collection was damaged—thanks to the staff's foresight in putting plastic sheets over the stacks and moving everything away from doors and windows—but the carpet and interior walls were drenched. As of October 8, conditions were close to normal, with the central computer system that serves all the branches back up and running. The Moss Point branch, however, had its STAR collection of outer space-related materials destroyed by water.
In other Mississippi counties, library damage was less severe. In Harrison County, "the library at Orange Grove had someone else's roof wrapped around it," as Director Robert Lipscomb put it. Hurricane-hit libraries in Alabama and the Florida panhandle survived with only a few broken roofs and electrical outages.
Posted October 12, 1998.