Little towns suffer too -- perhaps worse than others.

This sounds like life on the frontier.

Pearlington doesn't have a mayor or a city council. The closest thing to a government is the volunteer fire department, and most of its members evacuated ahead of the storm. They needed three days to hack their way through the debris and get back into town, said Fire Chief Kim Jones.

His firefighters did their best without outside help, Jones said, fighting fires, transforming their station into a makeshift shelter and acting as a surrogate police force. More than two weeks went by before U.S. Department of Forestry firefighters arrived and converted the elementary school into a shelter, which the Red Cross eventually took over, Jones said.