Posted on 09/03/2005 12:14:55 PM PDT by Cedar
Thanks.
Maybe by now some of the local news sources might have updates on that area. I'll check.
I'm glad the worst is over.
I felt for all of you having to go through that.
I went through a very similar situation, onyx.
I moved to Wilmington in mid-July, and six weeks later Diana blessed us with her presence.
We were without power for over a week.
It was a mess...took six weeks for them to pick up our yard debris.
I understand not being unpacked, and having that kind of mess.
I'm glad you and bourbon weathered it in fine fashion.
And, I am glad you are back!
It's hard to get gas in Meridian, too.
I understand it's hit or miss, with long lines.
"If you go out driving, you will see abandoned cars lining the roadways."
That sounds like Portland when it snows. ;o)
That's what my 91-year-old aunt said (who incidentally is from MS but worked for the Corps of Engineers in New Orleans for 18 years).
My wife's 60 year old cousin lived in Waveland
in an RV. We haven't heard from him yet.
I sure hope you hear from that cousin soon. Maybe he moved the RV to higher ground inland before the storm, but still can't phone.
Tom "Gator" Seefeldt, Davis' brother, lives in Biloxi, Mississippi. He is a 25 year veteran of the Navy, where he served as a SEAL, he is a veteran of Vietnam, has served in Somalia and Africa and has even spent time hunting alligators (hence the nickname) for the government. And although he's seen active combat and the terrible side of the human condition through his many years of work as a SEAL, when he got a call out to his sister two days ago, he said the devastation to his area was the worst he has ever seen."My brother is in Biloxi, right where it hit the hardest. My brother has been in service since straight out of high school; He's a Navy Seal and he's trained for survival. I know he's going to bring them all home, I know he is," she said.
Gator's land was spared in the hurricane - the only home in a five-block radius still standing, the only home with fresh, uncontaminated water and food. He even has a generator and a four wheeler that runs. He was able to call his sister thanks to having On Star in his car. Davis said Gator has been busy rescuing as many people as he can; when she spoke to him last, he had taken over 50 people into his home to give them food and shelter. He has pulled almost that many dead bodies out of the water and taken them to I-90, where he told Davis there were about 800 corpses lined up along the road for rescue workers to retrieve. It was 102 degrees when Davis got to speak to her brother and the mosquitoes and flies were eating the survivors alive.
Lt. Rusty Pittman of the Mississippi Bureau of Marine Resources, involved in the search effort, said he worries the death toll "could reach 4,000, maybe 5,000, if not more." The official number of confirmed dead in Mississippi remained at 170, but Biloxi spokesman Vincent Creel said Monday he thinks there will be several hundred dead just in Biloxi.My personal opinion, that I've stated previously, is that they deliberately downplayed MS because they didn't want hundreds of thousands of worried relatives clogging all the roads. There is no longer any point, because people who haven't heard from their relatives/friends are now going to get on the roads to find out what happened
Those estimates are unbelievable. I had no idea the MS deaths would reach that high too. Guess I thought most of them had at least evacuated up to Hattiesburg or Jackson area.
Very sad.
BAY ST. LOUIS, Miss. – The makeshift morgue in this leveled town of 8,000 people is a parking lot on a narrow two-lane road that runs along some rusty train tracks. Six refrigerated trailers are lined up in neat parallel behind a chain-link fence.So you could have a whole warehouse ful of bodies, but a body will only get counted towards the official death toll once a family member has officially identified the deceased. For many, if not most of these bodies, there can never be a positive identification after the amount of decomposition they have gone thru in the hot August weather.For a week now Norma Stiglet, the county coroner, a grandmotherly woman with white hair and spectacles, has been identifying the decaying corpses of lifelong friends and neighbors who tried unsuccessfully to ride out Hurricane Katrina.
[snip]
The official death toll in Mississippi is about 190. The last official count in Hancock County, of which Bay St. Louis is part, stood at just 36, but that could be ludicrously deceptive. One law enforcement officer estimated it is more likely to be between 600 and 800. The residents are “in for a shock,” he said. The reason the number is so low is that the state counts only bodies that have been recovered and positively identified.
What happens to the unidentified bodies?
The death toll in Miss is in the thousands. I have now spoken to at-least 4 people who have worked down there during recovery.If you did the math between the 4 of them you would be over 1,500 alone as far as tagging bodies is concerned.
If they begin to cremate...then we will never know the tally. Let us not forget the homeless,illegals, and anyone else who has become decomposed to the point of needing dental records which were probably washed away by this point in the floods.
Re: the unidentified dead: if soembody is missing for a sufficient amount of time, will he be counted as dead? A good percentage of the dead will have been collecting Social Security, pension, or welfare. Are scam artists going to pocket the money while maintaining the pretense that these people are still alive? Who knows
We also will never know how many bodies were washed out to sea when the storm surge went out. I would guess a good percentage of the dead will never be found, washed away or buried deep in the mud
Hmm, that's rather odd. The other night you were sure the toll wouldn't break 2000.
Still think that?
Whoa. You are efficient!
Perhaps they're adopting some BS requirement that the identification has to be done by the surviving next of kin (who may be in a distant state with no way to get there).
As I've stated in the other thread (the one that turned into such an unfortunate flame-fest with the obstinate believers-in-officialdom), this information-blackout is a story in itself. The media admit openly now that the official figures are deliberate fiction (see post 69), yet they still cooperate in the fiction.
Are they so contemptuous of the American people? What explanation can possibly apply at this late date. Earlier I was going "OK, they want to calm people down, and don't want 100 thousand worried relatives clogging the MS highways", but WHAT IS THE POINT now?
Do they really believe they can sweep this under the rug? Do they really think they can label all the eye witnesses to all the bodies as tin-foils? I admit we have more than a few posting on FR who would like to do just that, but it's now far past the point where it's anything other than futile.
The dead in MS exist. They exist in numbers FAR greater than the officials admit. There are lots of open eye witnesses to it all who are calling their friends and relatives with the news. It's OVER, guys. Any attempt to continue it is just spitting in the faces of all those who have seen
Are you still have severe gas shortages or long gas lines?
Our Exon was open today --- no lines --- gallon of REGULAR = $2.69 9/10. Call it $2.70.
Does ANYBODY have a plausible theory why officialdom and the MSM are still persisting in the fiction of less than 200 deaths in MS?
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