Left with only the clothes on his back by the massive cyclone, like tens of thousands of others along this devastated coast, the main goal for Tatum is survival.

"How do we do? You do the best you can, you try to survive," he said with the soft resilient accent characteristic of this corner of the poor American south.

His home was obliterated, everything is gone; Tatum has slept for two nights atop a refrigerator left to rest in his sodden garden by the furious winds and waves.

"You eat whenever you can, when your neighbors have something, potted meat, juice, potato chips, sardines, sausages," he said.

With a leaden, steamy and increasingly fetid tropical air hanging over the ground in Biloxi, life is barely restarting among the survivors of the storm.

Still dumbstruck by the catastrophe, residents sit motionless under the fierce sun in front of their crumpled homes.

One could only say that he did not even have any shoes left after Katrina had done its worst.

Barbara and Laverl Barhonovich are jammed together with their son of 28 onto the mini-balcony of their neighbor's home. Their own house did not survive Katrina's onslaught.

All that they could salvage from the house is hung on a railing: mud-soaked jeans, sports shoes. Their car is gone, washed away by the storm.

They point out their blisters from walking aimlessly in search of provisions and help.

Now they wait for rescuers to show up. They have yet to see any sign of relief workers or other officials since the storm hit Monday, they say.

"We need ice so bad, and we have about a gallon (four liters) of water," said Barbara Barhonovich angrily.

"We want to get a trailer" to live in, she said, or at least help to clean up their property.

Their better-equipped Vietnamese neighbour Vo, who evacuated his home before the storm, brought them cans of cold cola, and a sister sent over some chicken, sausages, tuna, and crackers. "Good to see you," a passing policemen offered.

Community spirit was not washed away with everything else in Biloxi. With power outages making it impossible to cook her own food, Vietnamese immigrant Sau Tran got cooked rice from friends living 50 kilometers (30 miles) away.

Tran's jewelery shop still sits in 1.5 meters (five feet) of floodwater.

"All our supplies were damaged ... I couldn't believe it, when I looked at it I thought it was a movie," she said.

"Hurricanes came here many times but each time they passed. ... I was crazy to stay here."

Survival demands resourcefulness, though even that has its limits. Like one man and his family, unwilling to give his name, who found some water at a fire station.

But "there's not much food left," he said.

"My wife works in Wal-Mart so she may be able to get something, but we have no gas. And little money. Where do people begin?"

In the absence of official relief operations, individuals, churches, and local stores are sharing out their own goods.

One mini-market passed out its stocks for free Wednesday, while another group arrived offering oranges to residents of Point Cadet, one of Biloxi's most devastated areas.

Some areas received their first official aid Wednesday when the government shipped to the Mississippi coast 85 truckloads of bottled water and ice.

At one distribution point, in a supermarket parking lot, hundreds of victims waited patiently by a truckload of water with whatever transport they could muster -- wheelbarrows, baby carriages, ice coolers.

But others could not wait. Looters have also run freely through Biloxi for the past couple of days, according to police, who admitted they close their eyes if people only take essentials.

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