Keesler cleanup going well (Katrina Klean Up!)

KEESLER AIR FORCE BASE, Miss. -- Staff Sgt. Art Hughes brushed wood chips and sawdust from his black T-shirt, which smelled of sweat and fresh pine. After cutting down trees all morning, it was break time, so he grabbed a bottle of water and gulped it down.

Across the street, the rest of “Youngblood’s Crew” kept working. The crew, led by Master Sgt. Randy Youngblood, was clearing part of the mess Hurricane Katrina left behind on Pinelawn Street in this base’s Bayview Housing Area.

“We have other crews working at some other housing areas,” said Sergeant Hughes, a pavements and equipment Airman with the 823rd Red Horse Squadron from Hurlburt Field, Fla. “We’re trying to work toward each other and finish this cleanup.”

Cleaning up Keesler, which has been a massive undertaking, is going well. The Red Horse team arrived the day after Hurricane Katrina devastated this training base to help base civil engineers with cleanup work. They brought their heavy equipment and know-how with them.

A half a block down Pinelawn, Airman 1st Class Seth Stucker watched the Red Horse crew at work. He said he is glad the team is on base. Katrina destroyed up to 1,000 of the base’s 1,800 houses. But the storm spared his home, which escaped with only a leaky roof -- now covered by a huge blue plastic tarp. Still, the medical technician lost a couch and all his clothes. Seeing Airmen with red hats at work meant a lot to him.

“They’re not from here, but they’ve been coming out and spending 12 hours a day cutting logs and clearing our streets,” said the Airman from Chittenango, N.Y. He arrived here five months ago and evacuated his wife before the storm. Since his house did not flood, he moved back in.

“It’s refreshing that people will give their time to help others. I’m really thankful,” he said.

A Red Horse advance team arrived at the flooded base Aug. 30. To get here, they had to cut their way through the debris that blocked the roads. At the base, there was no electrical power and people were still huddled in shelters. The next day, the rest of the 91-person volunteer team convoyed here by truck from their base in northern Florida.

“It was complete chaos when we arrived,” said Sergeant Hughes, who is from Beatrice, Neb. “But now this place is starting to look like an Air Force base again.”

That is because Red Horse engineers are doing what they specialize in, clearing massive amounts of debris, said Chief Master Sgt. Mark Lewis. His Airmen first cleared the main parts of the base. Then they cleared four on-base housing areas and five off-base housing areas.

“We haul away almost 3,000 tons of debris each day,” said the chief from Danville, Va.

But 10 days after they began their work, they are still at it -- though they have cleaned up more of the base at this stage than expected, the chief said. So Sergeant Youngblood’s crew keeps working.

“They want to get their work done, and then they want to go home,” Chief Lewis said.

On Pinelawn, part of the crew pulled branches out of broken and shattered trees. Others used noisy chain saws to cut up trees felled by the storm. A front-end loader scraped the sand-covered street as it scooped up a pile of brush, tree trunks and all sorts of debris and loaded it onto a huge dump truck. And on a “man-lift,” Airmen worked to pull a huge oak tree off the roof of a house.

Everyone helps, and when they are not doing their main jobs, team members help where needed. That includes the mechanics, services and other support Airmen the team uses.

“When they put on the red hat, they’re all part of this team,” Chief Lewis said.

Staff Sgt. Darius Kersch, who is from Pensacola, Fla., is a “limb puller” when he is not doing heating, ventilation and air conditioning work. He helped base civil engineers get their HVAC systems back on line when he first arrived, then he joined a cleanup crew.

“This place was truly a disaster,” Sergeant Kersch said. “So we had to make a difference.”

Chief Lewis said some team members also helped technicians here get their power grid back on line. They also fixed and moved generators to critical facilities.

The team is self-sufficient, the chief said. It set up a small camp complete with tents and dining facility and brought all their own heavy equipment and generators. To keep it supplied, 18 other Airmen drive tractor trailers back and forth from Hurlburt bringing needed equipment, supplies and materials. The team even adopted a yappy black mutt they named Katrina.

Sergeant Kersch said he is glad to stay. In the past year, he volunteered to help at bases after hurricanes Ivan and Dennis, but here it was personal. Stationed here three years ago, he still has friends in the local community.

“I have to give something back because people here were good to me,” he said.

The teams keep motivated with friendly competition. Sergeant Hughes said they measure how much work they do at the end of the day by the amount of fuel each team uses.

“So we kind of talk with the other crews and see how much fuel they’re using in their saws and compare it to how much you’re using,” he said.

After a long day of work, “Youngblood’s Crew” uses about 10 gallons of fuel -- enough to claim the “top crew” award, Sergeant Hughes said.

The competition is motivating. But the team is making a difference, which is “what we’re all about,” Sergeant Hughes said.

Though not yet finished, the team has done its job. It has helped Keesler get back on its feet quicker so its people can continue rebuilding and helping with relief operations in the Gulf Coast.

But the best part about what the team has done, Sergeant Hughes said, is giving people here “part of their lives back” and a chance to start over.

Hell rooters can't even find em.

The local coroners office posted on Sunday a list of around 600 people reported as missing from the Mississippi Gulf Coast. But with evacuees spread out in at least 34 U.S. states, officials are confident that most of them will be found alive.

http://today.reuters.com/News/CrisesArticle.aspx?storyId=BAL265671

Two weeks after storm, Mississippi finds its feet
Mon 12 Sep 2005 2:56 PM ET

By Crispian Balmer

GULFPORT, Miss., Sept 12 (Reuters) - Southern Mississippi's clean-up operation moved into top gear on Monday, two weeks after Hurricane Katrina devastated the coastline, with some major employers reopening for business and debris clearance starting in earnest.

Although much of the Mississippi state beachfront is little more than a ribbon of rubble, life further inland is gradually returning to normal.

Most of the roads are cleared of fallen trees, power has been restored to all properties that can safely take electricity and most homes now have running water and proper sewage access.

"It is just absolutely amazing that 2 weeks after Aug. 29 we are standing where we are at," said Colonel Joe Spraggins, director of civil defense in sea-facing Harrison county, one of the worst-hit areas in Mississippi.

"The streets are open, we have red lights that are working. The businesses are going back to work today, people are actually going back to their jobs today," Spraggins told a news conference.

Among the businesses that reopened on Monday were the major Northrop Grumman ship building yard near Pascagoula, local radio said. The tax collection service also hung up "business as usual" signs on their doors.

"I'm sure you wanted to hear that," Spraggins said.

Although most of the world's attention has focused on the plight of New Orleans, Mississippi bore the full brunt of the eye of the storm, which veered into the state at the last moment, bringing with it a lethal sea surge.

DEAD AND MISSING

So far, rescue teams have recovered 162 bodies from Mississippi's six, southernmost counties, with just 46 of the dead identified.

The local coroners office posted on Sunday a list of around 600 people reported as missing from the Mississippi Gulf Coast. But with evacuees spread out in at least 34 U.S. states, officials are confident that most of them will be found alive.

"The numbers of (new bodies) that we are finding everyday are going down," Spraggins said. "Hopefully we won't find many more."

After days of carefully sifting through debris in their search for storm victims, some of the worst-hit towns, including Gulfport and Bay St. Louis, called in the big garbage trucks on Monday to start the clear out.

Initial estimates suggest there are 16 million cubic yards (12 million cubic metres) of hurricane debris littering the state of Mississippi, enough to fill 1,000 football fields to a depth of 10 feet (3 metres) each.

That estimate could be conservative, given the almost total destruction in many places.

Officials at the seaside town of Pass Christian say only 300 of the 8,500-strong population have houses to return to. Tommy Longo, mayor of nearby Waveland, says that of his 8,000 residents, just 25-30 families are left living in the wreckage.

In Bay St. Louis, Mayor Ed Favre reckons half of his town's 4,000 homes were destroyed, while officials in the larger towns of Biloxi and Gulfport think they probably lost even more property.

But despite the scenes of catastrophic destruction, residents and the authorities are all promising to rebuild.

"We will be better than ever, you can count on that," Spraggins said.

http://news.ft.com/cms/s/6c3f1632-23d5-11da-b56b-00000e2511c8.html

Heartbreak as Mississippi mops up
By Demetri Sevastopulo in Gulfport, Mississippi
Published: September 12 2005 23:09 | Last updated: September 12 2005 23:09

Two young, girls in matching red T-shirts and blue denim skirts were looking for clothes. One smiled as she held up a pink shirt that took her fancy. Another young girl seemed happy to find a nice pair of shiny blue trousers.

This was not Gap or Benetton, however. The girls were among hundreds of desperate people rummaging for something to wear at a used-clothes dump in a shopping mall parking lot converted into a relief centre for victims of Hurricane Katrina.

“Heartbreaking” was how Jack Quinn, former White House counsel to President Bill Clinton, described the scene at Crossroads shopping centre in Gulfport, Mississippi, one of the most devastated coastal towns along the Gulf Coast.

And heartbreaking it really was. A half-naked man sat forlornly in the scorching heat amidst the piles of clothes that others trampled across in desperation. Along with his friend, a woman who had worked as a blackjack dealer on one of the many floating casinos along the Mississippi coast, he had lost everything – his home, his job, his pride.

“I wake up, I pray. I go to bed, I pray,” he said.

Steven Ewing had words to comfort the man: “If you believe in the Lord, he is going to carry you through.”

One of the legions of volunteers who have flocked to the regions destroyed by Katrina, Mr Ewing, a co-founder of the faith-based Compassion Alliance, was helping co-ordinate the relief effort at the shopping centre along with the National Guard. His organisation helped co-ordinate the arrival of 350 trailers of supplies, one-third from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the remaining two thirds from faith-based groups.

“This has been the epitome of the faith-based [approach],” said Mr Ewing.

While much of the media focus has been on the massive flooding in New Orleans and, until recently, the hordes of residents stranded without food and water, in many ways the devastation along the Gulf coast in Mississippi is even more unfathomable. President George W. Bush was yesterday scheduled to land in Gulfport to survey the damage.

In contrast to the chaotic scenes in New Orleans, however, the relief effort in Gulfport seemed more orderly. Cars lining up to receive supplies – mainly water, ice and MREs, or meals ready-to-eat – were ushered in eight at a time to separate stations, where National Guard members loaded supplies into their trunks.

People waiting in their cars were offered hamburgers prepared by a team of church members from Lagrange, Georgia, who were making the 12-hour return journey a couple of times a week to help. Ray Ham, the church administrator who led the 35-man burger-flipping team, said his group was grilling up to 5,000 burgers a day.

Not everybody could make it to relief centres, however. And as in New Orleans, many of those without cars remained in more dire straits.

“Our dispatchers have to literally listen to people dying on the phone,” said Damon McDaniel, a Gulfport policeman standing guard at the shopping centre.

The message from volunteers and others in the Gulfport community was that private companies were stepping in to help fill the void sometimes left by the federal government and its red tape. Dole Food Company, for example, had delivered several truckloads of pineapples to Crossroads. Other companies have also stepped up. On Thursday morning an Airbus Beluga cargo plane landed in Mobile, Alabama, with 22,000 tonnes of blankets, cots and tents donated by the French and British governments, which were transported to another relief distribution centre in Gulfport.

While some foreign governments and companies have complained about red tape, EADS, the European aerospace and defence company which is the majority shareholder of Airbus, was able to circumvent much bureaucracy by dealing with local officials in Alabama, where the company hopes to build refuelling tankers for the US air force.

Sam Adcock, senior vice-president for government affairs at EADS North America, who co-ordinated the relief effort on the ground and whose parents lost their home in Gulfport, praised the Transport Security Administration, however, for approving the Beluga landing within 24 hours instead of the customary seven days. The aircraft later transported a mobile hospital to Jackson, Mississippi.

Over the weekend, the US State Department said 115 countries and 12 international organisations had offered help, including $650m in pledges. South Korea has pledged two tonnes of disposable nappies. The European Union has also offered support and supplies, with the 25 member states banding together with five non-member countries under its civil protection mechanism, which was used to provide aid to victims of the Asian tsunamis earlier this year.

While the view from the ground showed the extent of the human suffering, the view from the air revealed the absolute havoc that Katrina wreaked along the Mississippi coastline.

Mile after mile along the coast from Biloxi to the now appropriately named Waveland, areas previously alive with restaurants, bars, casinos and beach houses, were reduced to wasteland. Perhaps the greatest demonstration of the power of Katrina, however, were the Copa and Treasure Bay casinos off the Gulfport coast. While the Treasure Bay had been almost completely destroyed at sea, the Copa had been carried inland to a place it was never meant to be.

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