Oct 06 2008
RamblerThree Weeks After Ike It’s a Grim Task For Rescuers
If this is your first visit, please consider subscribing to my RSS feed. That way you'll be sure not to miss a thing!
Three weeks after Hurricane Ike slammed Texas at least 34 people are missing and some are presumed dead.
Volunteers and rescue workers have been sorting through miles of debris in the marshes on the eastern side of Galveston Bay. They are using dogs trained to find human cadavers.
It is slow going. They are wading through the debris left from ruined lives.
Two bodies have been recovered so far.
The devastation was so complete on Bolivar Peninsula that officials fear some victims may be lost at sea or so hidden in the marshes that they won’t be found.
The storm’s outer winds pushed a torrent of water across the peninsula early in the morning on September 12…effectively trapping over 100 people who had been told there was still time to evacuate.
During that day rescue workers in helicopters saved about 130 people from the flood waters before the winds got too strong for them to continue the rescues.
Many people either chose to stay or found themselves trapped in their houses. The floods rose to about 18 feet above normal tide. This completed inundated the peninsula.
The fear now is that most of the people who are still missing are no longer alive. With each passing day it becomes less likely that those missing will be found alive.
| 3.5 |
One response so far
My sister lives in Beaumont, and she said the Crystal Beach area was under a no-fly zone the week after Ike because they expected bodies to start washing ashore. She was lucky where she was…they had a bit of wind damage, but nothing major and no flooding in her neighborhood.