192 replies to this topic

[Cajun Diver]

i talked to my dad again today...he's going to bolivar tomorrow to look at where his cabin was. He said the reason people weren't allowed back sooner is because of bodies being recovered...he said in Beaumont, Broussard's Mortuary had to hire refrigeration trucks to utilize...he said over 400 people are still missing for the galveston/chambers and surrounding area, including friends that went down there to secure their places and never could get back out. I am so grateful he changed his mind and was not one of them!

Recovering bodies wasn't the main reason - it was the road was covered with sand, debris and hanging wires that made it dangerous to travel. Most of the bodies recovered so far have been in the debris field on the north side of the east bay. They also wanted to check for bodies but after looking at the area most things that floated well went miles and the heavier stuff dropped of first.

I've never seen so many golf carts, a/c units and cars - many dropped into the small canal that is behind where our cabin was and anything that could float was gone unless it hung up on something.

Here's a link to a local news story that dispels the rumor that the refrigerated trucks are for the recovered bodies - they are actually for the natural deaths since none of the mortuary's had power after the storm:

Story on refrigerated trucks

A list of the missing are here: Laura Recover Center Ike Missing persons page

I've put most of the pictures I took on Saturday in my Photobucket Ike Gallery

It's still loading as I write this so more will show up soon.

[Cajun Diver]

Butch, sorry to hear of your property loss on Bolivar. I know a lot of people on Bolivar, a handful of them still missing. Things aren't looking good for them at all at this point, but cell phone communications are almost impossible still with some vendors on the coast (for once, Sprint works well), so am hopeful that some will still turn up.

Thanks - it can be replaced we just have to figure out if we want to. I had decent cell coverage with Sprint all the way to Crystal Beach (and my Dad had better coverage on Verizon) since they are running the towers that survived on generators. They also had some type of command post at the school with a satellite hookup so people going down there can communicate to some degree.

[ScubaSis]

Sis

Thats the thing in SAR/FF/EMS thats what we are paid to do is to go in when everyone is running the other direction(think of 9/11 there are many tales of off duty personnel coming in grabbing there gear and then going to the towers without being asked or paged). The only time you need to worry is when we turn and run then you had better keep up. ifyouknowwhatimean


People who ignore the manditory orders should not expect to be saved, and shouldnt get any help afterwards either or if they do they need to be billed the full cost of the rescue and supplies. someone told be the average cost of a rescue cost north of $30K per person via ground and 3x that if a helicopter was used(yeah and you thought helicopter EMS bills where expensive at $10-15K and up). Then I have seen some photos that i cant post and i dont think anyone here of those that decided to stay and got swept out to sea and or got caught in debris, including one photo that on the ceiling of a room is a written a final note. So next time they say get out do so, you would think especially after what happened this time around and katrina people would listen, but no apparently Darwin hasnt worked well or quick enough in the population. Life is hard, It's alot harder when your stupid!

I agree Tooth!!! 100%

[Cajun Diver]

Did anyone else have this problem with your job???

We had a lot of that before Hurricane Rita but after more places closed early to let people prepare and leave. Before Gustav and Ike threatened placed were closing early so people could - of course there were exceptions and there were problems after Gustav since it didn't hit and we had a massive evacuation. Many people stayed simply because they didn't think they could afford to leave.

[secretsea18]

Many people stayed simply because they didn't think they could afford to leave.

Isn't that the reason that there were buses to take people to shelters in other areas... It was televised that there was transportation available to those who did not have it. After Katrina, I can't imagine that a mandatory evac would not have transportation available for those who didn't have a car or could afford it....
TV even showed the buses. Was this just flim/flam??

[Scubatooth]

I dont quite buy the afford thing, as how much do you value your life at? Plus the evacuations out of the area via bus are billed to the state not the people on them.

Trust me there where plenty of buses and paratransit vechiles to move a lot of people out of the way of this storm, and how to get to the rally points was well transmitted over TV radio and through local officials days in advance of land fall. For Gustav there where 1600 buses at lackland AFB staged ready to go and another 1000 in beaumont that where then moved to SAT, and i know that they were not demobilized but kept there because IKE was originally supposed to hit less then 5 days after gustav.

[Mitch0129]

Many people stayed simply because they didn't think they could afford to leave.

Isn't that the reason that there were buses to take people to shelters in other areas... It was televised that there was transportation available to those who did not have it. After Katrina, I can't imagine that a mandatory evac would not have transportation available for those who didn't have a car or could afford it....
TV even showed the buses. Was this just flim/flam??

The buses were available days before the storm and they were constantly running. People just chose to not get out because it was "only a category-2 storm" and/or they did not want to leave their homes. As I posted earlier, I know of a 90-year-old woman who refused to leave her home four blocks from the seawall because she did not want to leave her cats. She nearly did not make it.

[Cajun Diver]

Isn't that the reason that there were buses to take people to shelters in other areas... It was televised that there was transportation available to those who did not have it. After Katrina, I can't imagine that a mandatory evac would not have transportation available for those who didn't have a car or could afford it....
TV even showed the buses. Was this just flim/flam??

Yes there were buses but many didn't want to ride the buses and were complaining about gas/hotel costs after Gustav - which FEMA wouldn't reimburse even though it was a mandatory evacuation since we didn't get hit with that one.

[Scubatooth]

"only a category-2 storm"

and covered 700+ miles in width. and had a eye over 50 miles wide, and hurricane force winds out to 175 miles from the storm as well. The big fallacy is that the category system of storms is one of many scales used to measure the power of a storm. I dont have the links handy but there is another scale out there that isnt well advertised that is a very good predictor of a storms power. This scale is a complicated formula that measures the integrated kinetic energy(no pun intended) of a storm. well to put it nicely IKE may have been only a cat 2 storm wind wise but the force behind it was more then that of Katrina and Andrew (almost combined). This scale as also factors in the wave height(trough, peak, and average), wave intervals as well. yeah winds will damage but the water does alot more as it has more inertia behind it to do more damage then the wind ever could.

[Scubatooth]

Butch

the reason FEMA inst paying for hotels anymore initially is that after katrina/rita there where people buying full fare first class plane tickets and booking themselves into 5* hotels in the cities they landed in and then demanded the government to pay for it, and when FEMA refused those people said they would sue for it (well they lost). The system is now that they will evac you out on buses to shelters outside of the disaster zone then after a certain period of time (10days) if the damage is so great that your going to be away from home for a extended period of time they will put you up in a hotel for about 30 days then they will put you up in long term housing for upto 6-9 months. mind you this is only goes into effect when they register you into the system at the initial shelter and verify your info, so to weed out the cheats. This registration takes about 2-4 days total because of all of the checks done now.

This is how the system is set now because of the debacle of katrina and people moaning about getting there "gubmint checks"(dont get me started there as the horns will show- this is a very sore subject) cut out when some of them got to live up to 2 years after the original 6 month cut off for benefits. That and those benefits were being used to buy luxury cars and accessories instead of what it should have been used for which was basic needs and food.

[shawnabbott]

i talked to my dad again today...he's going to bolivar tomorrow to look at where his cabin was. He said the reason people weren't allowed back sooner is because of bodies being recovered...he said in Beaumont, Broussard's Mortuary had to hire refrigeration trucks to utilize...he said over 400 people are still missing for the galveston/chambers and surrounding area, including friends that went down there to secure their places and never could get back out. I am so grateful he changed his mind and was not one of them!

Recovering bodies wasn't the main reason - it was the road was covered with sand, debris and hanging wires that made it dangerous to travel. Most of the bodies recovered so far have been in the debris field on the north side of the east bay. They also wanted to check for bodies but after looking at the area most things that floated well went miles and the heavier stuff dropped of first.

I've never seen so many golf carts, a/c units and cars - many dropped into the small canal that is behind where our cabin was and anything that could float was gone unless it hung up on something.

Here's a link to a local news story that dispels the rumor that the refrigerated trucks are for the recovered bodies - they are actually for the natural deaths since none of the mortuary's had power after the storm:

Story on refrigerated trucks

A list of the missing are here: Laura Recover Center Ike Missing persons page

I've put most of the pictures I took on Saturday in my Photobucket Ike Gallery

It's still loading as I write this so more will show up soon.

Well, I'm not about to tell my dad, who rode it out in Beaumont, and lost the cabin...that someone here said he was wrong. I'm sure he has his sources like neighbors, businesses he's done business with for 50 years...

[Mermaid Lady]

Lee, if there is one lesson to be learned from this is that you do get the hell out of there, even a cat-1 hurricane is nothing to fool with.

Mitch,

That may sound good on the surface, but a lot of it depends on where you are.

Of course there's no way I would ride out a storm on a coastal barrier like Galveston or Bolivar. But from where we were, attempting to evacuate this storm was a greater risk than sheltering in place. With the unpredictability of the storm's path and the unpredictablilty of traffic, there was no way that we could be sure of getting out of the storms path in time; and there was a very real risk of being caught in gridlocked traffic on an open road in the middle of a cat-2 Hurricane and/or tornadoes.

As it stood, we rode out the storm on the second floor in a re-inforced brick building. My car was on the third floor of a multi story parking garage. Was it a guarantee of safety? No, nothing is. But it was the best shot we had. We did fine.

Edited by Mermaid Lady, 30 September 2008 - 09:04 AM.

[mantarraya]

It is not just a matter of getting out but getting out with plenty of time so one does not get trapped. There is one woman and her two kids missing from my subdivision. Their home is fine - just light damage. Everyone is worried that they tried to leave when the roads were flooding. Hopefully they will turn up, but the communications in Galveston are pretty good - cell phones from several vendors work fine, and there are plenty of people around on the island at this point, so certainly reason for worry.

Another older man drowned in his truck near the Seawall because he left his home (which all say he could have survived in given the amount it flooded).

I always try to get out in plenty of time, but now realize that getting out even earlier that what I was doing may be a good idea.