Posted on 08/30/2005 10:10:45 PM PDT by My Favorite Headache
It is with heavy heart I write this...
I have finally reconnected with my best friend who is a paramedic who was sent from Georgia 2 days ago to Gulf Port, Mississippi before the hurricane hit.
He just reached me within the last 10 mins via emergency cell phone to tell me he was alive.
Thousands of bodies have been discovered throughout Mississippi in Gulf Port, Waveland,Hancock County,Bay of St.Louis.
They are hanging in trees and they are pulling them out 30 at a time. Entire families found drowned in their homes and washing up on shore.
The stories he could tell me were brief. National Guard is on the scene and arresting anyone seen on the streets.
The numbers are staggering and what I have been told tonight will shake people to their foundation as the numbers will be coming out in the next 24-hours of just how many people have actually perished in these and 3 other beach communities.
More to follow....
Yup.
2 - I refuse to feel sorry for the able bodied men who are being rescued.
I didn't address able bodied. I think some stayed just to loot. At least in NO I think they did. But there were emergency presinnel that stayed behind. Cops, EMTs etc.
Those people in the Dome should be grateful - counting their blessings - that they had a place to go.
I have to agree. The people in Gulport, Biloxi and Pass Christian had nowhere.
Btw, some stayed behind in NO because of their pets. They aren't allowed in shelters.
What issue am I avoiding? I came online this morning and notice somebody who is adding zero to the conversation but constant doubts to my credibility.
Am I supposed to respond to each of your posts all day long and kiss your ass?
You can forget that.
Reminds me of President Bush not bothering with Cindy Sheehan.
So, I'm curious. What do you think the death toll from this disaster will be, based on what you know now? I'll take a range.
So, you win. Now go away.
The sheep must remain fat, dumb, and happy, don't you know.
Am listening to the shortwave networks....they dont want any health and welfare traffic in the gulf coast....that is people inquiring on loved ones...still dealing with emergency
Where you been? I figured you'd been here by now
There is already an effective evacuation plan. It's called 'advanced warning'. No one was caught off guard. Everyone knew it was coming and many made the wrong choice of not evacuating. The old 'it won't happen to me' syndrome.
Watch the evacuation with the next hurricane...
AAM: Literally. I was involved in a fire/building collapse investigation once, and another insurance adjuster was standing ON a body without knowing it until a fireman told her to move . . .
OMG! I can't imagine the things rescuers are seeing.
Good grief
But apparently some here think they should be spending their time issuing confirmed body counts.
YOu answered everyone else and addressed things they said...I have asked you questions to the validity of your alleged story and recieved .....*crickets*
"What issue am I avoiding? I came online this morning and notice somebody who is adding zero to the conversation but constant doubts to my credibility."
Oh I have added plenty to this conversation.
Like some common sense in the chaos you created over unsubstantiated claims based on hearsay with no way to back it up.
For someone who claims to be a reporter...you sure are violating a lot of rules of reporting in posting this like you did.
Fifteen THOUSAND died from Hurricane Mitch in El Salvador in 1998. What, Three Hundred Thousand died in the tsunamis of last Christmas?
The height of vanity is to believe that it couldn't happen here because we're somehow too rich and too well equipped and too.... insulated.
Read Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities sometime. It's not about this exactly, more about a Tawana Brawley situation, but it's a good study on the kind of hubris that we indulge in here in this country.
And yes, it's looking like we're going to need all the help we can get from anywhere we can get it. And yes, it's looking like this is a 9-11 scale catastrophe or worse and we will probably be facing recession.
Here in Illinois we also live in a defenseless zoo, since Illinois does not recognize the second amendment.
txradioguy: "If anyone doubted you were a moonbat before...this confirms it."
If anyone ever doubted it, they still doubt it, I'm sorry to say. These black helicopter religious / conspiracy kooks give Free Republic a black eye.
LOL!
bttt
The morning after 9/11 I, along with tens of thousands of other citizens, volunteered to help out.
The police sent us all to the Javits Convention Center.
We were lined up in order and we were asked in turn by emergency workers if we had (1) medical training, (2) social work training or (3) welding/construction skills.
Anyone who answered yes to these questions was immediately sent to a separate line to be deployed in a series of shuttle buses donated by local bus companies.
Meanwhile, local restaurants went up and down the lines in a coordinated way distributing sandwiches, candy bars and water to volunteers.
As busloads of tired volunteers returned from Ground Zero they were quickly replaced and the exhausted volunteers coming off shift were given meals and directed to air mattresses to rest and to secured phones to call loved ones.
99% of the people there were private citizens, many of them rendered homeless or displaced by the attack (at one point, no one uninvolved with the rescue effort was allowed to go south of 14th Street, so thousands were stranded and signed up to volunteer).
With a modicum of government direction they equitably distributed food and bedding, assigned tasks to one another and took care of sanitation in shifts.
Everyone was pretty upset, tired, dirty, etc. But there was discipline and resolve and teamwork. It was amazing and I was glad to be a tiny, extraneous part of it.
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