Replies

Some fairly new material here, including 30 dead in one apartment building.

Mississippi search crews pulling bodies from rubble - railroad tracks about six blocks from beach
Houston Chronicle ^ | August 31, 2005 | THOMAS KOROSEC

Posted on 08/31/2005 2:11:38 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife

Heaviest loss of life appears to be from Biloxi building collapse

GULFPORT, MISS. - Stunned residents emerged from shelters and homes Tuesday to start assessing the massive damage left by Hurricane Katrina as rescuers pulled bodies from crushed homes and apartments near the coast.

The death toll in this hard-hit county rose to more than 100, but officials believe that number will rise. "There's so much rubble, we won't know for a while. But I fully expect the number to be in the hundreds," said Jason Green, assistant to the Harrison County coroner.

In an auxiliary morgue downtown, hearses unloaded bodies uncovered by search-and-rescue teams.

"Several families have brought in their dead," Green said.

County Supervisor Connie Rockco said it appears the heaviest loss of life was in east Biloxi, where an apartment building collapsed and killed 30 people.

"But there are fatalities from one end of the county to the other," Rockco said.

Gulfport Fire Chief Pat Sullivan said most of those who died in Gulfport perished in the zone of the storm surge, which pushed up to a set of railroad tracks about six blocks from the beach.

"We begged, we pleaded, we demanded. We told them they had a good chance of dying if they didn't leave. But there's only so much government can do to protect people," Sullivan said. "Too many people tried to ride it out. We can't regulate good sense."

Thought they were safe

Sullivan said many homes that survived the catastrophic Hurricane Camille in 1969 were washed away by Katrina.

"People in them thought they were safe, that lightning doesn't strike twice in the same place," he said.

In Biloxi, at the Quiet Water Beach apartments, at least 30 people died when the two-story building crumbled in the storm Monday. One resident, Joy Schovest, told the Associated Press she swam for her life.

"We grabbed a lady and pulled her out the window and then we swam with the current," said Schovest, 55, breaking into tears. "It was terrifying. You should have seen the cars floating around us. We had to push them away when we were trying to swim."

All that remained of the apartment complex was a concrete slab surrounded by a heap of red bricks that were once the building's walls. A crushed red toy wagon, jewelry, clothing and twisted boards were mixed in with the debris.

Gulfport Police Lt. Michael Shaw said he and others in his search crew carried bodies across stretches of rubble that ran blocks from the beach.

"I've lived here all my life, and in some places we were, I couldn't recognize where I was," Shaw said.

The central part of the city, near the coast, looked as though it had been rocked by an explosion. At the waterfront, the blocklong floating Copa Casino had been heaved about 200 yards onto the shore. Its sides were blown to tatters, especially on the lower levels of the roughly six-floor structure.

The floating Grand Casino also was pushed aground and came to rest several blocks west of its former location.