300 people still missing since Ike hit Texas

[jus_the_facts]

Source: CNN

-- Alligators loom over submerged cars. Mountains of debris are embedded in the ground. Cows, trucks and the remnants of homes are sunk into the ocean. And unverified sightings of missing loved ones are still making the rounds.


Traci Turner says she hasn't hear from her sister Danielle Chapman or her two nephews since the storm. More than 300 people are missing since Hurricane Ike hit the Texas coast last month, and the obstacles to finding them are frustrating family and friends who desperately want to know if their loved ones are dead or alive.

These family and friends want answers: Why are so many still missing? Why is the first organized search for bodies, to be held Thursday on the battered Bolivar Peninsular, taken so long?

Local and state authorities are conducting Thursday's search and have been working with the Laura Recovery Center, a missing persons organization. The center helped compile a list of missing people and police are using the information to go door-to-door looking for answers.



Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/10/02/ike.missing/index.html

---

UNVERIFIED INFO from another website....

We are contractors. So we got in first.

Seabrook Texas--
The community is reporting 800 missing families. These were people who were known to have stayed.


Matagorda all the way to LA...
Battered to toothpicks. From the beach in land to 7 miles.
Few structures left intact enough to call "remodel" "repair". 99% of all buildings are complete re-builds. The real report is 4200 bodies recovered in the water. 300 more not recovered-total so far known dead/missing bodies, is 4500.

7-10 miles inland--
80% of all structures have damage. We are stripping the first 4' of sheetrock(flooding)to the struts. All flooring, many roofs. Trees and power lines are still being repaired.
Most of the "media" reports that dealt with Center point misled, they just didn't tell you they were not repaired but jury-rig to get power up. Some wires are on roofs and hanging to the ground so cars can pass over. This stretches for hundreds of miles along the coast. Every town was hit. The inlets and bays got it worse because of the water bore. Height at that point exceeded 20'.

[AnneD]

1. They are just now getting to the large piles

of debris, so we should start finding bodies-or what's left. Lots of dead cattle in there too. It is bound to be a mess.

I heard this am on the news that they would be working on the large debris fields today. We may not know how many and who for a while. And that is just those that washed up.

[Crowman1979]

2. How many of them were the ones partying it up while Ike made landfall?

[EFerrari]

8. What? These people were told they had until Friday morning

to get out. When they woke up on Friday, it was too late.

[Catherine Vincent]

3. A lot of them probably washed out to sea or are too decomposed.

Sad.

[Deep13]

4. Also, Texas village still missing its idiot. nt

[mamameow]

7. idiots/guy upstairs

darn, we have more trouble catching that missing idiot to smithe him. it is not his good luck but his company keeping with the guy downstairs!!!

[unhappycamper]

5. How the hell can we still be missing 300 people?

I thought FEMA and the feds were on the case.

[EFerrari]

9. You answered your own question.

:(

My heart goes out to those families and to their communities. Another big swathe of pain across the landscape.

[quoddy woman]

6. unbelievable!

I went thru 3 very bad hurricanes on the TX coast in the 60's; Carla and Celia were the worst. Celia did a massive amount of damage to Corpus Christi where I was living.It took 10 days to restore electricity. Friends who lost their homes had comfortable mobile homes, not large but adequate, until they were able to rebuild. It is like we are living in a 3rd world country now. It is hard for me to wrap my mind around the fact that no one knows how many people were lost and also that this is so underreported. There is no excuse for this! What have we come to in this country. I don't have the words to express my outrage!

[countryjake]

10. Here's a local article about this desperate search & no help...

Cadaver dogs lead recovery teams to 5 sites of possible remains on Bolivar
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/hurricane/ike/6035379.html

~snip~

Experts from Texas Task Force One had been assisting in the search for survivors, but left just a couple of days after the storm. It was only after repeated pleas from Loop that they agreed to return.

The Special K-9s Search and Recovery Team, led by Ja'Na Bickel of The Woodlands, came to Crystal Beach on Monday after more than a week of conducting searches elsewhere in Galveston County. The team, which participated in searches after Hurricane Katrina, was surprised by the lack of resources for such a challenging, if not impossible job.

"In Katrina terms, it's not that many people. But for these people here, it's everything. Their culture is all gone. There's nothing left," said Paul McDowell, a Willis-based searcher who brought his German shepherd, Ben, to help out.

[jus_the_facts]

11. Thank You for the extra information...

....that's verified.

[countryjake]

13. I was pretty surprised to even hear anything on CNN about the missing...

considering that the Ike story has been virtually buried all of this time, by the national media. They were actually fairly matter-of-fact-like discussing the grim truth today as I listened.

Seems almost like they're warming us up now or something, for the bitter discoveries that may likely be found as those searchers move in with their cadaver dogs. They even had Chad Meyers showing pictures, before and after, of Bolivar Peninsula and pics of massive debris piles, while discussing those who haven't been located.



Here's what they said this morning, during my dinner hour:


From the CNN Newsroom Oct 2 with KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR

About 300 people, including 24 children are still missing, nearly three weeks after Hurricane Ike battered the Texas coastline. They remain unaccounted for. Crews using dog teams are scouring mounds of storm debris today. Officials hope that most of those missing evacuated to shelters and aren't even aware that they're being sought.

Most are from the area's hardest hit, including Crystal Beach, Port Bolivar, Gilchrest -- -christ, rather, and Galveston. Well, the weather service says that staying on the coastal islands during Ike would be certain death. Chad Myers in the weather center.

You know, you've got some pictures here to show it and explain.

CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Well, right. The weather service took a lot of heat about that little statement that they said, "If you stay on the islands, you'll face certain death." And then people stayed on Galveston Island and they said, "See? I'm still alive."

Well, the problem is, they really didn't get a good look at what the Bolivar Peninsula looked like, because people were down there in Galveston. Now they are finally back in Bolivar, and we'll show you.

This is what this peaceful area of Bolivar looked like, a little square right through here. I want you to notice that there's a little canal back here and there's a bunch of homes in the middle. Now I'm going to show you exactly what it looks like now after the storm. That same square is right there. That's it. That's the canal and that's the beach.

Let's go back up to the top. We'll show you what it did look like. There's the canal right there. There's the beach. One, two, three, four, five, and I'll count them all. There's 39 houses in that square. Now see how many are left. Two. One, two. Thirty-seven houses don't exist anymore. They are gone.

People were in those houses. If they were, they're in parts -- those are the ones that are missing, I'm afraid. Because this is just -- that's an unsurvivable event there, when your house leaves you and it just takes you into the debris field as you're washed away. People know about that from Katrina. Some people did survive floating on rooftops. But we didn't get any reports of that in this storm -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: All right. And just to be clear, because I think I mispronounced it. It's Port Bolivar?

MYERS: Bolivar, like Oliver.

PHILLIPS: OK. And Gil-christ or Gilchrist?

MYERS: I think it's "crisst."

PHILLIPS: OK. Gilchrist. Thank you, Chad.

MYERS: I don't know. That's a 50/50 shot on that one.

PHILLIPS: All right. I just want to make sure I get it right for those who live there.

MYERS: Sure.

[jus_the_facts]

14. Thanks again bro.....

...I was hesitant about postin' some unverified information along with the CNN article...but KNEW from previous Katrina uncounted that this DESERVED attention here. :(

[countryjake]

16. Check out those pics in the photo gallery of that Chronicle article...

and look at the condition of the car and the pick-up truck found at Rollover Pass bridge, one buried up to the hilt in sand...those are the vehicles of the relatives the fellow in the article is searching for, his mother, sister, and nephew, who were evacuating from Port Bolivar at the far end of Bolivar Peninsula.




They made it all that way, from the very tip of the peninsula to the channel that separated them from the mainland. That bridge had already washed out, early on Friday morning, long before Ike ever made landfall.

It just looks hopeless to me, for finding any one that might be buried under literally feet of sand, like their car is.

[jus_the_facts]

12. KICK......

...if Katrina didn't open enough eyes.......

:wtf:

[illuminaughty]

15. kick

And I still think there is a media blackout on this.

[BDW1964]

17. Going in tomorrow

My search, rescue and recovery team finally got called up, after two weeks. We are going into Chambers County. For the first two weeks, the only SAR units in were the paid FEMA Urban SAR Task Forces. Hundreds of trained, equipped and experienced SAR technicians in Texas (all volunteers) were not activated by Texas or FEMA, even though local authorities were begging for help. I wish we could have been in to try and save people, but I am afraid this is going to be really ugly now.

[jus_the_facts]

18. Can't and don't want to even begin to imagine havin' to do that....

....can't believe it's taken this long for them to call ya'll in either...sigh...take care of yourself and welcome to DU.