It's still the place they would rather call home

BILOXI, Miss. -- One of the women for whom Patricia Pawlak used to clean house was looking everywhere for her. She searched all the local emergency shelters and put Pawlak's name on a website listing missing people.

The employer, Kappy Stephens, didn't think to look in the Point Cadet neighborhood where Pawlak lived, just behind the Grand Casino, because almost everything near here was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina.

On Friday, Stephens was amazed to find that Pawlak, her boyfriend, and their housemate were only yards away from the shotgun house they once lived in, camping under a tree still standing in a neighbor's yard.

''I would never go to a shelter, I got four dogs," Pawlak told Stephens.

Pawlak and the two men with her aren't the only ones. In a neighborhood where most houses are nothing but piles of debris, a few Biloxi residents are living a frontier existence inside what remains of their homes or on their property.

In some cases, they have scrubbed their damaged dwellings spotless; in other cases they are living in filthy, unsanitary conditions. Residents of a public housing complex in Biloxi that was flooded in the storm said they were told Friday that they would have to leave because of poor health conditions.

Joe Spraggins, director of the Emergency Management Agency in Harrison County, which includes Biloxi and Gulfport, said public health officials are trying to visit local neighborhoods and warn holdouts of the dangers they face if they stay.

''We don't want someone to go into a damaged house and then have the roof fall in," he said. ''It doesn't take mold too long to grow."

Of the county's 185,000 residents, about 3,000 are staying in local shelters, thousands are staying nearby with friends and family, and thousands of others have left the area, Spraggins said. But he said authorities have no idea how many were sticking by their seriously damaged homes.

People who choose to stay by their houses despite poor conditions might be doing so for emotional reasons, said Roger Pitman, a psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital.

''It gives them a sense of safety," he said. ''They may be afraid to leave."

Some of the holdouts are still struggling to cope with what happened to them during the storm. Pawlak, her boyfriend, B.A. Anderson, and their friend, Joe Brooks, had to escape their house by breaking through the metallic roof with a mallet and swimming out. Brooks managed to get a hold of a neighbor's skiff, and that's how they survived.

''To tell you the truth, I really don't remember coming out of that house," said Pawlak, 58, covering her face with her hand. ''You forget a lot of things."

When the storm receded, Brooks built a fire and used a rack from a neighbor's oven to grill on. They pulled chicken and a roast out of their freezer to cook and found a picnic table that was still in one piece.

Since then, countless volunteers have come by with supplies -- tarps, camping chairs, and finally, just on Friday, a big tent emblazoned with the Rotary Club insignia.

The group has about 15 boxes of military meals-ready-to-eat, plenty of water, cases of ravioli, bug spray, flashlights, and even apples, oranges and potatoes.

Each of them has been homeless before, and Brooks has put his 13 years as a Seabee to good use, rigging together a toilet with a bucket and a salvaged handicapped chair, and then burying the waste. They've taken showers with bottled water.

Residents of Oakwood Village, a public housing project, said officials from the Biloxi Housing Authority told them they would have to be out by Wednesday. The officials said the complex of brick town houses is uninhabitable after storm water flooded the entire first floor.

Housing authority officials could not be reached, but residents said they were told they would be given transportation to other cities in Mississippi or Tennessee, or a voucher to help pay for travel elsewhere.

Although some said the complex isn't in much worse shape than it was before, there have been numerous illnesses. A few residents went to the hospital with diarrhea. An 18-month-old had a strange rash around his mouth. Others were complaining of a cough or having difficulty breathing.

Four of Amanda Dean's five children began vomiting and developed diarrhea shortly after the hurricane. Her 4-year-old has an infected cut and a possible spider bite. But Dean, 28, who is raising the kids alone while her husband serves a four-year prison sentence, doesn't want to go.

''Everyone told me at the beginning to be thankful you have your life, but what am I supposed to do? Go live on the streets with my kids?" she asked. ''I just can't do it."