Gold9472
09-01-2005, 07:48 PM
Supply Delays, Heat Frustrate Survivors in Mississippi
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-090105mississippi_lat,0,3645144.story?coll=la-home-headlines
By P.J. Huffstutter and John-Thor Dahlburg, Times Staff Writers
9/1/2005
BILOXI, Miss. -- On the coast of Mississippi today, tempers were fraying in the unbearable heat as scores of National Guardsmen arrived to keep order.
Residents waited for hours for promised food and relief supplies that never arrived and motorists languished in lines up to 80 cars deep to buy rationed amounts of gasoline. Looters helped themselves to everything from DVDs to cough syrup, and officials warned that it might take several more days to identify all of Hurricane Katrina's victims.
Coastal residents desperate for water and ice began lining up at 4 a.m. in a parking lot in Pascagoula, Miss., where authorities had promised to deliver supplies come morning. Seven hours later, they were still waiting — with no delivery truck in sight. The lines — two of them by now — each stretched at least two miles.
There were more lines at every open gas station: Lines 60 or 70 or 80 cars deep. As they waited for hours for their $25 ration of gas — cash only, pay upfront -- some drivers ambled among the line, commiserating with neighbors. Others hunkered in their cars, using up their last gallons of fuel by running the air conditioning. Some had to push their cars to the pump.
Many told stories of waiting for hours, only to have the station close — no gas — just as they reached the front of the line. Exhausted, they would push their car to the next closest station and start again.
It was so humid and hot that it felt like work just to breathe.
The stench was nauseating.
Rotting sewage, human waste, burned wood and the sour tang of bayou mud merged in a foul, earthy smell that clogged throats and churned stomachs.
Along the coast, families tried not to breathe as they pushed through the wreckage trying to figure out which pile of debris used to be their house.
Communication systems were almost all down, but there was one bridge, west of Pascagoula, where cell phones worked, at least sporadically. Both sides of the bridge were lined with cars. Residents sat on the hoods — or stood on the roof of the tallest SUVs — waving their phones in the muggy air, trying desperately to get a better signal.
The coroner for Harrison County, home to a string of devastated coastal towns, warned survivors that it could take many days to identify all the victims. Bodies were decomposing quickly in the heat, making identification difficult.
And there were not enough refrigeration trucks to back up the overwhelmed morgue.
In Biloxi, looters smashed the windows of a video rental store and walked out with their arms overflowing with DVDs. Survivors ravaged a Family Dollar Store in Waveland, grabbing Spaghetti-Os, cough syrup and bleach.
All along the coast, local radio reported that parked cars had been broken into in the night, their gas siphoned off.
In the town of Gauthier, about 20 miles inland, a shattered house bore this warning, spray-painted in orange on what remained of the roof: "We still have the bullets left over from [Hurricane] Ivan. Beware, looters."
On Wednesday, few answers were forthcoming as authorities and citizens tried to assess Katrina's toll across Mississippi.
It seemed clear that the wind had done more damage much farther inland than officials had realized, toppling enormous old oak trees and stripping off roofs 100 miles and more from the coast. But there were no firm estimates of the damage; it was impossible to add up so much destruction.
"It's one of the most depressing things I've ever seen," U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.) said.
Gov. Haley Barbour, just back from a tour of the state's southeast quadrant, put it this way: "A lot of Mississippians got clobbered."
Here on the gulf shore, this city of 55,000 was all but demolished. Authorities struggled to find a way to help the dispirited -- and still slightly awestruck -- residents who ambled in a daze around streets that looked more like landfills.
There was no phone service, no electricity and so little water that firefighters pleaded with residents to be extra careful with candles, lest they start a blaze.
Convoys of 18-wheelers carrying supplies began reaching southern Mississippi by afternoon, but distribution was spotty and generally focused on shelters. So when a Salvation Army truck rolled into east Biloxi at midday, scores of residents swarmed it.
Sweaty and drained, many waited in line for at least 30 minutes to get a plastic container of beef stew, a small bag of corn chips and a bottle of water, handed out by volunteers from Sand Springs, Okla.
"We wanted to go to the hardest-hit area, and this is it," Salvation Army Capt. August Pillsbury said. "Look around you. There's nowhere to live. There isn't any worse than this."
In truth, the same words could have been spoken in any community along Mississippi's once-golden coast.
In the small town of Bay St. Louis, whole neighborhoods washed away -- block after block swept down to the bare foundations.
In Gulfport, two hospitals were heavily damaged. A middle school was on the verge of collapse. Dozens of beachfront homes were missing.
It took rescue teams two days to even approach the town of Waveland, population 7,000. It was cut off from the mainland when a bridge over the bay washed out. Most of the town was in splinters, and the air smelled of death. Survivors scavenged the rubble for food.
Up and down the coast, survivors tried to catalog the mess: Lyman Elementary, lost. Hancock County's emergency center, swamped. First Baptist Church in Long Beach, leveled.
"It's unimaginable," said Vincent Creel, public affairs manager for Biloxi.
Lt. John Lowe, of the Biloxi Police Reserve, said he expected the death toll to exceed 100 in this one city alone.
Rescue workers excavating each block of debris said they were still searching for survivors. Increasingly, though, they found themselves counting bodies. And then moving on, with apologies, to the next pile of wreckage.
Well into Wednesday afternoon, four bodies lay crushed under the collapsed cement-block walls of the Seashore Mission, a soup kitchen in east Biloxi. It was unclear when they would be extricated.
"The police were here. They took their names. They just don't have the time to come get the bodies," said Kevin Miller, who was standing nearby.
But even with all the goodwill and lavish promises, many here said they could not imagine how they would recover.
Especially in the poorer Biloxi neighborhoods, most of the residents were renters without insurance. Even some business owners said they had no coverage, no way to rebuild.
At My-Viet Market, the floor was slick with mud, the merchandise was toppled in a heap, and the boxes of shrimp crackers were soggy. The air was ripe with the smell of coming rot. And the Vietnamese immigrants who ran the store were dejected.
"There's nothing left right now," said Huy Huynh, 21, an employee.
"No insurance. We lose everything," owner Oahn Kim Nguyen added.
Times staff writer Stephanie Simon and wire services contributed to this report.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-090105mississippi_lat,0,3645144.story?coll=la-home-headlines
By P.J. Huffstutter and John-Thor Dahlburg, Times Staff Writers
9/1/2005
BILOXI, Miss. -- On the coast of Mississippi today, tempers were fraying in the unbearable heat as scores of National Guardsmen arrived to keep order.
Residents waited for hours for promised food and relief supplies that never arrived and motorists languished in lines up to 80 cars deep to buy rationed amounts of gasoline. Looters helped themselves to everything from DVDs to cough syrup, and officials warned that it might take several more days to identify all of Hurricane Katrina's victims.
Coastal residents desperate for water and ice began lining up at 4 a.m. in a parking lot in Pascagoula, Miss., where authorities had promised to deliver supplies come morning. Seven hours later, they were still waiting — with no delivery truck in sight. The lines — two of them by now — each stretched at least two miles.
There were more lines at every open gas station: Lines 60 or 70 or 80 cars deep. As they waited for hours for their $25 ration of gas — cash only, pay upfront -- some drivers ambled among the line, commiserating with neighbors. Others hunkered in their cars, using up their last gallons of fuel by running the air conditioning. Some had to push their cars to the pump.
Many told stories of waiting for hours, only to have the station close — no gas — just as they reached the front of the line. Exhausted, they would push their car to the next closest station and start again.
It was so humid and hot that it felt like work just to breathe.
The stench was nauseating.
Rotting sewage, human waste, burned wood and the sour tang of bayou mud merged in a foul, earthy smell that clogged throats and churned stomachs.
Along the coast, families tried not to breathe as they pushed through the wreckage trying to figure out which pile of debris used to be their house.
Communication systems were almost all down, but there was one bridge, west of Pascagoula, where cell phones worked, at least sporadically. Both sides of the bridge were lined with cars. Residents sat on the hoods — or stood on the roof of the tallest SUVs — waving their phones in the muggy air, trying desperately to get a better signal.
The coroner for Harrison County, home to a string of devastated coastal towns, warned survivors that it could take many days to identify all the victims. Bodies were decomposing quickly in the heat, making identification difficult.
And there were not enough refrigeration trucks to back up the overwhelmed morgue.
In Biloxi, looters smashed the windows of a video rental store and walked out with their arms overflowing with DVDs. Survivors ravaged a Family Dollar Store in Waveland, grabbing Spaghetti-Os, cough syrup and bleach.
All along the coast, local radio reported that parked cars had been broken into in the night, their gas siphoned off.
In the town of Gauthier, about 20 miles inland, a shattered house bore this warning, spray-painted in orange on what remained of the roof: "We still have the bullets left over from [Hurricane] Ivan. Beware, looters."
On Wednesday, few answers were forthcoming as authorities and citizens tried to assess Katrina's toll across Mississippi.
It seemed clear that the wind had done more damage much farther inland than officials had realized, toppling enormous old oak trees and stripping off roofs 100 miles and more from the coast. But there were no firm estimates of the damage; it was impossible to add up so much destruction.
"It's one of the most depressing things I've ever seen," U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.) said.
Gov. Haley Barbour, just back from a tour of the state's southeast quadrant, put it this way: "A lot of Mississippians got clobbered."
Here on the gulf shore, this city of 55,000 was all but demolished. Authorities struggled to find a way to help the dispirited -- and still slightly awestruck -- residents who ambled in a daze around streets that looked more like landfills.
There was no phone service, no electricity and so little water that firefighters pleaded with residents to be extra careful with candles, lest they start a blaze.
Convoys of 18-wheelers carrying supplies began reaching southern Mississippi by afternoon, but distribution was spotty and generally focused on shelters. So when a Salvation Army truck rolled into east Biloxi at midday, scores of residents swarmed it.
Sweaty and drained, many waited in line for at least 30 minutes to get a plastic container of beef stew, a small bag of corn chips and a bottle of water, handed out by volunteers from Sand Springs, Okla.
"We wanted to go to the hardest-hit area, and this is it," Salvation Army Capt. August Pillsbury said. "Look around you. There's nowhere to live. There isn't any worse than this."
In truth, the same words could have been spoken in any community along Mississippi's once-golden coast.
In the small town of Bay St. Louis, whole neighborhoods washed away -- block after block swept down to the bare foundations.
In Gulfport, two hospitals were heavily damaged. A middle school was on the verge of collapse. Dozens of beachfront homes were missing.
It took rescue teams two days to even approach the town of Waveland, population 7,000. It was cut off from the mainland when a bridge over the bay washed out. Most of the town was in splinters, and the air smelled of death. Survivors scavenged the rubble for food.
Up and down the coast, survivors tried to catalog the mess: Lyman Elementary, lost. Hancock County's emergency center, swamped. First Baptist Church in Long Beach, leveled.
"It's unimaginable," said Vincent Creel, public affairs manager for Biloxi.
Lt. John Lowe, of the Biloxi Police Reserve, said he expected the death toll to exceed 100 in this one city alone.
Rescue workers excavating each block of debris said they were still searching for survivors. Increasingly, though, they found themselves counting bodies. And then moving on, with apologies, to the next pile of wreckage.
Well into Wednesday afternoon, four bodies lay crushed under the collapsed cement-block walls of the Seashore Mission, a soup kitchen in east Biloxi. It was unclear when they would be extricated.
"The police were here. They took their names. They just don't have the time to come get the bodies," said Kevin Miller, who was standing nearby.
But even with all the goodwill and lavish promises, many here said they could not imagine how they would recover.
Especially in the poorer Biloxi neighborhoods, most of the residents were renters without insurance. Even some business owners said they had no coverage, no way to rebuild.
At My-Viet Market, the floor was slick with mud, the merchandise was toppled in a heap, and the boxes of shrimp crackers were soggy. The air was ripe with the smell of coming rot. And the Vietnamese immigrants who ran the store were dejected.
"There's nothing left right now," said Huy Huynh, 21, an employee.
"No insurance. We lose everything," owner Oahn Kim Nguyen added.
Times staff writer Stephanie Simon and wire services contributed to this report.