Astonishing Exclusive From Mississippi [hundreds if not thousands dead]

Paramedic Rescue Operation | 8-31-05 | My Favorite Headache

[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....

[George W. Bush]

The reporters are all hanging out together in dry sections of New Orleans hoping to get more pictures of looters or shots of black people yelling "racism".

It is hard to figure out why they're slanting the story a particular way. One would think they would be doing more to put a white face on the disaster and to provide more coverage in Mississippi since they think we're all so racist. Making the coverage 'whiter' would seem the most likely way to make people mad at the government and therefore Bush. So why aren't they?

In the case of CNN, I think they're pandering to their large overseas audience by trying to show America as backward and racist. That would play well in many parts of Asia and certainly in Europe. Also in Blue America. I just don't see the same payoff for Fox News or the mainstream TV networks who have a lot of affiliates in those areas.

[Mrs Zip]

ping

[savedbygrace]

Clarification: Marking on the arms of the dead so they're not counted more than once? Right?

[GregoryFul]

How about the memory of Chavez giving $1,000,000 to al Qaeda after 9/11, and praising bin Laden for his act? Yea, how about that memory?

[George W. Bush]

A new thread on Mississippi.

Gulf Coast News:Mississippi Gulf Coast Reeling from Hurricane Katrina From Ground Zero

"Concerns over how badly Katrina tore into families and how shook people are is that officials have not released death figures. It will be shocking. One person who I know that is working on the recovery of bodies said that the teams are not being informed of the totals."

If accurate, it would explain the silence from Mississippi.

[GregoryFul]

Right, it is a long term problem. An engineering project that would take 10-20 years after they got out of court answering environmental concerns.

You can blame it on the system. We (the system) have grown so encrusted with the barnacle lawyers and bureaucratic process administered by "no-nothings" (sic) that we cannot get out of the path of danger. Hold onto your butt - it is at high risk.

[My Favorite Headache]

Sad bump indeed

[EverOnward]

"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."

Yes, I heard the same thing a coupld of days ago ... heard the news is not reporting what is really going on both in Mississippi and in Louisiana.... It just seems to get worse.

[EverOnward]

"medics are marking the numbers of dead on their arms in marker to keep count."

True. They've been doing that for a couple of days now...

[rahbert]

Bad idea. It makes us appear selfish and uncaring and
doesn't help anyone here.

We are admired around the world, to a large degree because
we help our neighbors on the planet.

[bwteim]

From my 09/01/2005 7:01:21 AM EDT post to you...


http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1474387/posts?page=2432#2432

MFH, in hindsight, we probably all wished your hot thread had read: "Astonishing Exclusive From the *Gulf Coast* [hundreds if not thousands dead]".

It would have avoided a lot of internal squabbles.

Even so, with a corrected title, we would still have wished *that* news to be so wrong.

[Victoria]

Several reports I've heard say they won't even find everyone that is missing because victims are buried under so much debris. or washed away. That number is likely not "thousands", of course, but this may be why they are reluctant to say much until they are able to reconcile the difference between the number of "missing" versus "found".

[geopyg]

heard on the news one nursing home in NO had 80 dead inside - presumed drownings.

If NO Mayor estimate of 100,000 didn't leave NO is accurate, and 50,000 evaced at the superdome and convention center, where are the other 50,000? Any reasonable estimate on how many got out on their own? (25,000?) Any estimate how many are holed up safely in ther apartments with a bathtub of water waiting for rescue?

I'm hoping the mayor is wrong on his estimate (and me on my pessimistict assumptions).

[Barnacle]

I believe this report. All through this catastrophe, detailed reports have been suspiciously sparse. The whole thing is much worse than they are allowing us to know. Instead, we are being fed dribs and drops of information at a rate they think we can digest it.

[Barnacle]

I find it amazing that I have been watching CNN for days and haven't heard anything about this!!!!

First, stop watching CNN. Second, read Free Republic.

[Sprite518]

Well we really have not had a real count.. Hopefully, someone was not telling the truth. If so, then this will be awful.

[SauronOfMordor]

As I earlier noted on another thread, there's lots of people who are trying to contact people in Mississippi, without success. The assumption is that phone service is out. For most, that lack of contact really is because phones are down. For some unknown percentage, the lack of contact is because the people are dead.

The Gulf Coast is a big area. If the news media broadcast lots of stuff about large numbers of deaths, you would have hundreds of thousands of concerned people clogging the roads to the affected areas to go and find out what happened to their relatives and friends. I don't think the government wants that while they're still working on rescue efforts. And there's no way to stop people from trying to get to the shore along a myriad of back roads

Around about now, the assumption "they're out of contact because the phones are down and the roads are not good" becomes less likely. Even if the phones are down for miles around, SOMEBODY with a 4WD vehicle is going to head north at some point for supplies and to make some calls to family. If he's at all considerate, he's going to ask his neighbors if they have any messages they want to relay to family and friends once he gets to a working phone or cell tower.

Past this weekend, there's no advantage to attempting to continue the fiction that there's only 186 or so deaths in MS. People WILL start getting in their cars to go look for their relatives

[Victoria]

Concerning Mississippi, all you must do is have a look at the satellite photos to see how bad it is. We haven't seen the worst of it.

The worst areas in MS are where the debris fields stopped, they are still mostly inaccessible.

It's staggering.

[geopyg]

"The worst areas in MS are where the debris fields stopped, they are still mostly inaccessible."

Some official from Louisana said something like "everyone is focused on New Orleans, but we have 90 miles of territory to the south that hasn't even begun to be looked at."

Hopefully much of that territory is unihapited swamp.

I saw one banner last night with a Red Cross estimate of the dead. I haven't seen it repeated and won't repeat it here.

And yes, it is staggering.

[George W. Bush]

Several reports I've heard say they won't even find everyone that is missing because victims are buried under so much debris. or washed away. That number is likely not "thousands", of course, but this may be why they are reluctant to say much until they are able to reconcile the difference between the number of "missing" versus "found".

I've never said that MS won't have a death toll in thousands. I did express strong doubts about the reliability or a report of thousands dead so very quickly after the storm. And my doubts may (or may not) have been misplaced.

At any rate, I expect neither to receive or to give apologies and never have seen much point in such things. I still think MS deserves a lot more attention and that the media is very silent and the federal effort may be even more lacking there than it is in NOLA.