Official: Katrina worse than Ivan

Transcription

BAYFLAVOR
WEATHER
Today: A mix of clouds and sun.
Humid. Highs low to mid-90s.
Rain chance 40 percent.
Tomorrow: Fair to partly cloudy.
Highs low to mid-90s. Rain
chance 10 percent.
Complete Weather/10B
SPORTS
TIPS FOR DEALING
WITH FROZEN FOOD
AFTER THE STORM
HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL
COULD RESUME FRIDAY
IN MOBILE, BALDWIN
PAGE 1D
PAGE 1C
Since 1813
Alabama’s oldest
newspaper
Mobile-Baldwin
Edition
50 Cents
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 31, 2005
NO MERCY
FLOOD CRISIS WORSENS IN NEW ORLEANS, SCORES DEAD
IN MISSISSIPPI AS TERRIBLE IMPACT OF KATRINA UNFOLDS
Homes wrecked in Alabama as thousands remain without power
KATRINA’S
HEADLINES
Daily
Daily
Finding help: Who has
emergency food and ice?
What are the curfews?
What about garbage pickup? You’ll find answers to
those and other essential
questions on Page 2B
Insurance: With insured
losses of up to $25 billion,
Katrina could be worse
than Hurricane Andrew and
the 9/11 attacks./12A
Cochrane bridge: The Cochrane-Africatown USA
Bridge remained closed
Tuesday after a loose oil rig
slammed into it during the
storm./1B
Drinking water: Contaminated drinking water may be
one of the biggest health issues in coming days. Some
boil orders have already
been issued./19A
Dauphin Island: As people
began returning to Dauphin
Island, some found that
they didn’t have homes to
check on./1B
Docks: The Alabama state
docks sustained some of its
worst damage ever when
Katrina pushed 12 feet of
water up the Mobile River./
15A
Upstate: Inland counties in
southwest Alabama began
what appeared to be a
weeks-long road to recovery Tuesday./1B
Bayou: South Mobile County residents continued to
deal with the aftermath of
storm surge and wind
damage./19A
Grand Hotel: The historic
Point Clear resort, covered
by slick mud, has been
closed indefinitely./18A
Baldwin beaches: The first
damage reports rolled in
Tuesday from Fort Morgan
peninsula, but Gulf Shores
and Orange Beach hoped
that businesses could be
open for Labor Day
weekend./18A
Causeway: Several restaurants along the Causeway
were nearly destroyed
Tuesday and a section of
the Tensaw River bridge
collapsed./14A
Power outages: More customers regained power
Tuesday, but thousands of
others were likely to endure
another hot day today./1B
Agriculture: State agricultural officials were cautiously
optimistic that crops were
not heavily damaged by
Katrina. Page 6B
Airlines: Passengers contended with flight delays
and other hurricane-related
disruptions Tuesday./6B
Downtown Mobile: Lawyers
and other professionals
mopped up waterlogged offices Tuesday, but said no
essential records appeared
to have been lost./14A
Vol. 192 No. 113 Mobile, Ala. 62 pages 5 sections
JOHN DAVID MERCER/Staff Photographer
The new Hard Rock Hotel and Casino along U.S. 90 in Biloxi, which has not even opened yet, shows extensive damage Tuesday from Hurricane Katrina, which struck
the Gulf Coast on Monday. The $235 million hotel and 50,000-square-foot casino was scheduled to open early September.
“The situation (in New Orleans) is untenable. It’s just heartbreaking.” — Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco
By BRETT MARTEL
Associated Press Writer
NEW ORLEANS — Rescuers along the hurricaneravaged Gulf Coast pushed aside the dead to reach
the living Tuesday in a race against time and rising
waters, while New Orleans sank deeper into crisis and
Louisiana’s governor ordered storm refugees out of
this drowning city.
Two levees broke and sent water coursing into the
streets of the Big Easy a full day after New Orleans appeared to have escaped widespread destruction from
Hurricane Katrina. An estimated 80 percent of the below-sea-level city was under water, up to 20 feet deep
in places, with miles and miles of homes swamped.
“The situation is untenable,” Gov. Kathleen Blanco
said. “It’s just heartbreaking.”
One Mississippi county alone said its death toll
was at least 100, and officials are “very, very worried
that this is going to go a lot higher,” said Joe Spraggins, civil defense director for Harrison County, home
to Biloxi and Gulfport.
Thirty of the victims in the county were from a
MISSISSIPPI GULF COAST
Tourists of their own tragedy
Residents see their lives scattered amid the debris
By STEVE MYERS
Staff Reporter
The day after Hurricane Katrina struck the
Gulf Coast, residents of Biloxi and Ocean
Springs, Miss., took part in a sad, tourist-like
procession through their post-storm world.
People in Ocean Springs weaved through
hanging power lines and fallen trees to East
Beach, where they saw what was left of the
oceanfront mansions:
Driveways and stairs that led nowhere.
“Everyone’s life is scattered there,” said
Tom Sellers, who rode his bike through the
area. “Picture albums — I must’ve seen 20 or
30 picture albums.”
The tragedy of Biloxi and surrounding
Harrison County had been all over the news:
Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour said the
death toll in that county alone could be as
high as 80. About 30 of the dead were believed to have been swept away in the Quiet
Water Beach apartments.
The storm also inflicted a punishing blow
to Biloxi’s waterfront casinos. The Grand Casino gambling barge and a second casino
broke away from their moorings, ending up in
a ditch filled with water and slot machines.
On Tuesday, cars and trucks made their
way along Beach Boulevard in Biloxi, where a
casino chair, plucked from its slot machine,
stood next to a microwave.
Please see Mississippi Page 6A ៑
beachfront apartment building that collapsed under a
25-foot wall of water as Katrina slammed the Gulf
Coast with 145-mph winds. And Louisiana officials
said many were feared dead there, too, making Katrina one of the most punishing storms to hit the United
States in decades.
New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin said hundreds, if
not thousands, of people may still be stuck on roofs
and in attics, and so rescue boats were bypassing the
dead.
Please see Rescuers Page 13A ៑
Official: Katrina
worse than Ivan
By JEFF AMY
Staff Reporter
Water and wind were replaced by muck and downed
tree limbs Tuesday, as Alabamians began cleaning up from
Hurricane Katrina.
But as people picked
through debris, it became clear
that ruinous storm surge had
inundated many areas close to
the Gulf of Mexico and Mobile
Bay.
Mobile County Emergency
Management Agency Director
Walt Dickerson said that due to
flooding Katrina was “going to
prove more devastating than
Ivan” to Mobile County. Hurricane Ivan blew through in midSeptember.
“I think the best way to sum
this up is there is a tremendous, awesome amount of destruction all over the Gulf
Coast,” Gov. Bob Riley said
Tuesday afternoon after a helicopter tour of the area with
federal and state officials.
At the same time, state authorities began to send a trickle of help to neighboring states,
as less-impacted Alabama began to see the calamity that
Please see Alabama Page 4A ៑
2A ᑹ
MOBILE REGISTER
SoundOff
HURRICANEKATRINA
KATRINA
Looters make
off with
merchandise
from several
downtown
businesses in
New Orleans on
Tuesday after
Hurricane
Katrina hit the
area. The
looting was
taking place in
full view of
passing
National Guard
trucks and
police cruisers.
219-5780
For callers outside the Mobile area:
1-800-945-9773
You may speak your mind on anything you
wish. Because of the large number of calls, we cannot publish all comments. We also may edit some
comments for length and clarity.
Shame on us if we complain over gas
Shame on us if we complain about not having power or gas for our generators. Let us think
about Biloxi, Gulfport and New Orleans and get
on our knees and thank God that we’re still
breathing.
There are ways to cope
I just heard it might be days before we get
the power turned back on. So I thought a couple
of tips might help you out. I’m 71 years old and
have been through quite a few hurricanes here in
Mobile. Foam plates and paper plates make excellent fans. Hold them in your hand and fan
yourself. Take a clean spray bottle and put clean
water in it, spray your face and fan it — it’s like
having an air conditioner in your house. Keep
your house closed up and your shades down,
and it will stay cool until about 10 or 10:30. You
don’t have to be the first person in the neighborhood to have a clean yard. You could be the first
person to end up in the hospital with heat
stroke. Let the yard go, it’ll be all right; it’s not
going to run away.
People need to realize that water kills
I sympathize so with everyone in Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama who have lost lives
and property, but I just wish people would realize that water kills. You cannot stay on the water
during a storm like that. I live in a manufactured
home, and I knew to get out. I wish people would
learn to get out of manufactured homes and out
of low-lying areas.
Photos by ERIC GAY/Associated Press
Brazen looters ravage New Orleans
៑
Many steal without
regard to law officers
By ALLEN G. BREED
Bridges seem to have problems
My power is off, and I’m listening to the radio. I’ve just heard that the Cochrane-Africatown
USA Bridge is damaged. They can’t use it until
they check it out. They’re going to build another
one across the Mobile River? They have to be
kidding.
Why can’t doctors work, too?
If policemen, firemen, garbagemen, streetsweepers, can all come to work after the storm,
why can’t doctors? I am furious. I had an appointment today, and my doctors have not shown up,
and the office is closed tight.
Senior speaks for custom shutters
I have custom-made shutters that stay on
my house year-round. My house is not trashy
looking, and I don’t keep Christmas lights up. My
yard is as neat and nice as my next door neighbors’ yards. I am handicapped, and I’m elderly,
and my yard can match anyone’s.
Another shutter-user cites advantages
My shutters do not look bad. They look
great. I keep my yard up, and I keep my house
neat. My power bills are about a third of what
yours are. Mine rarely runs over $65, and I think
that’s great. I run my air conditioner up around
72 degrees.
The hurricanes bring in the love bugs
We weren’t as prepared as we needed to
be, and now my husband’s out looking for diesel
fuel for our generator, but that’s not what I called
to talk about. What brings the love bugs in is the
hurricanes. They’re already here.
Grateful for televised coverage
A New Orleans police officer holds a shotgun as he tries to keep people
away from a drug store in a flooded area of downtown New Orleans on
Tuesday. Numerous other nearby stores were looted.
I want to thank Channels 5, 15 and 10 and
all the radio stations for all the good work they
did during the storm. It’s a mess out here. Chickasaw is a mess.
Glad to hear some other news
Channels 3, 5, 10 and 15 can take their
weather coverage and jump in the lake. I am
thankful for the few stations where we can get
something except news about the storm being
every few seconds.
Disappointed in Coleman’s column
I’m disappointed in Frances Coleman’s column Sunday. She makes it sound as if all these
hurricanes are punishment. I don’t appreciate
that point of view.
Finds Coleman’s comments insightful
I always enjoy Frances Coleman’s column.
Her comments are always so insightful and right
on the mark.
Building on Dauphin Island is a mistake
Dauphin Island never was worth building
on. The taxpayers have rebuilt that bridge twice,
I know, and have had to spend money on pumping sand on an island mother nature wants to
wash away. Why don’t they just move? It isn’t
anything but a trap anyway. It’s not worth anything.
Who will pay for underground lines?
Every time a storm blows through the Gulf,
you hear the scream, “Why don’t we have underground utilities?” Who is going to pay for it?
We’re talking billions of dollars. Alabamians
don’t want to pay more property taxes to have
decent schools; what makes you think they are
going to take a price increase on their utility
bills?
Lottery
From 1855:
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Play 4:
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Mega Money:
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Fantasy 5:
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Monday Fantasy 5
10-12-13-24-29
Winners per category
No. of Winners
5 of 5
4 of 5
3 of 5
2 of 5
0
266
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85,759
Amt. Ea.
$0
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Georgia Tuesday
Cash 3 Midday:
Cash 3 Evening:
Cash 4 Midday:
Cash 4 Evening:
Mega Millions:
Fantasy 5:
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1-0-5
8-5-2-4
Not available
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Louisiana Tuesday
Pick 3:
Pick 4:
Cash Quest:
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Some lottery numbers were not available because of an early press time.
Winning numbers from late drawings
will be published the second day after
the drawing, or check the following
Web sites:
Florida: www.flalottery.com/
Georgia: www.georgialottery.com/
Louisiana: www.louisianalottery.com/
Index
They have to earn education
From a mother with two in college, let me
explain some things to you folks who think everybody is entitled to a college education. We
have had to work very hard to put money away
for this day to come. It is not a right, and it is not
a privilege. It is something you work for. The government has no business trying to up or lower
any of the standards when it comes to the cost of
tuition. In fact, in the state of Alabama, Alabama
and Auburn are cheaper than most private
schools. As far as textbooks, try buying yours on
the Internet. It can really lower the price.
Yesterday’sNews
News
Florida Tuesday
Category
Bay Watch
Business
Comics
Deaths
Editorials
Markets
Sports
Television
Weather
NEW ORLEANS — With much of
the city flooded by Hurricane Katrina, looters floated garbage cans
filled with clothing and jewelry
down the street in a dash to grab
what they could.
In some cases, looting Tuesday
took place in full view of police
and National Guard troops.
At a Walgreen’s drug store in
the French Quarter, people were
running out with grocery baskets
and coolers full of soft drinks,
chips and diapers.
When police finally showed up,
a young boy stood in the door
screaming, “86! 86!” — the radio
code for police — and the crowd
scattered.
Denise Bollinger, a tourist from
Philadelphia, stood outside and
snapped pictures in amazement.
“It’s downtown Baghdad,” the
housewife said. “It’s insane. I’ve
wanted to come here for 10 years.
I thought this was a sophisticated
city. I guess not.”
Around the corner on Canal
Street, the main thoroughfare in
the central business district, people sloshed headlong through hipdeep water as looters ripped open
the steel gates on the front of several clothing and jewelry stores.
One man, who had about 10
pairs of jeans draped over his left
arm, was asked if he was salvaging
things from his store.
“No,” the man shouted, “that’s
EVERYBODY’S store.”
Looters filled industrial-sized
garbage cans with clothing and
jewelry and floated them down the
street on bits of plywood and insulation as National Guardsmen lumbered by.
Mike Franklin stood on the
trolley tracks and watched the
spectacle unfold.
“To be honest with you, people
who are oppressed all their lives,
man, it’s an opportunity to get
back at society,” he said.
A man walked down Canal
Street with a pallet of food on his
head. His wife, who refused to give
her name, insisted they weren’t
stealing from the nearby Winn-Dixie supermarket. “It’s about survival right now,” she said as she held
a plastic bag full of purloined
items. “We got to feed our children. I’ve got eight grandchildren
to feed.”
At a drug store on Canal Street
just outside the French Quarter,
two police officers with pump
shotguns stood guard as workers
from the Ritz-Carlton Hotel across
the street loaded large laundry
bins full of medications, snack
foods and bottled water.
“This is for the sick,” Officer Jeff
Jacob said. “We can commandeer
whatever we see fit, whatever is
necessary to maintain law.”
Another office, D.J. Butler, told
the crowd standing around that
they would be out of the way as
soon as they got the necessities.
“I’m not saying you’re welcome
to it,” the officer said. “This is the
situation we’re in. We have to
make the best of it.”
The looting was taking place in
full view of passing National Guard
trucks and police cruisers.
One man with an armload of
clothes even asked a policeman,
“Can I borrow your car?”
Some in the crowd splashed
into the waist-deep water like giddy children at the beach.
2D
6B
6-7D
4B
16-17A
7-9B
1C
8D
10B
“Democratic Meeting. — The
meeting at the Court House, though
not so dense a throng as that on the
previous Wednesday, was a very
large one. — Nightly ward meetings
during the week and the want of so
full a notice as was given at the first
account readily for this. Still there
were not less than one thousand
persons on the ground.”
Thurs., Aug. 31, 1905
“Yesterday was a rainy,
cloudy day. The river front was uninviting, the river full of floating logs
and driftwood which were a constant menace to the tugs and other
river craft that had occasion to
move up or down stream. Altogether it was a disagreeable day.”
“Mr. Motley Lewis has returned from a delightful visit to
Fisher’s Island, N. Y., and brings
with him the news that among the
gay throng of handsome women
who are at this place none is more
admired than one of the gulf city’s
attractive girls, Miss Corinne Orton.”
“Mr. Norman Pitman left yesterday on the steamer Sabine for
New York, from which place he will
sail on September 9 to visit his relatives in England.”
Sun., Aug. 31, 1930
“In furtherance of plans for
the benefit boxing program the
night of September 20 to aid the Mobile County Tuberculosis Association, at which Jack Dempsey, exheavyweight champion, will be in
the ring as referee, Mayor Harry T.
Hartwell yesterday announced the
complete personnel of the arrangements and reception committees.”
Serving with the mayor, in addition
to City Commissioners Cecil F.
Bates and Leon Schwarz, were Robert M. Weinacker, Jack P. Courtney,
William H. Monk, Jr., Dr. Lee W. Roe,
Dr. H. S. J. Walker, John F. Prigge, A.
P. Imshorn, Frank E. Courtney, Dr. J.
H. McCormick, R. H. Radcliff,
Charles D. Batson, C. L. Hutchinson,
George M. Cox, Jr., and Tom Ford.”
“Mrs. Terry L. Moore, with her
lovely young daughter, Amelia, who
will be one of the season’s debutantes, and her two sons, Terry, Jr.,
and Blake, will return home Tuesday from Monteagle, Tenn., where
they spent the summer at their cottage, ‘Abbotsford.’ Terry, Jr., will
leave Wednesday for the Virginia
Military Institute at Lexington, Va.,
where he will be a sophomore.”
“Twenty years’ service in the
custodian department of the United
States government resulted Saturday in T. J. Sherry, superintendentengineer of the Mobile federal building, being retired from active service and presented a gold watch by
the custodian force of the building.
While he has served the government for more than 40 years, only
20 years of that time was devoted to
work in the custodian department.”
“Thirty-nine years in Uncle
Sam’s employ as a railway mail
clerk. That’s the record of Robert E.
L. Eastland, 1354 Davis avenue, who
yesterday received a letter from
Postmaster General Walter F. Brown
congratulating him upon his splendid record of service and retirement.”
Wed., Aug. 31, 1955
“Three members of the Mobile
Symphony’s Junior Orchestra are
featured in a September issue photo
of Seventeen magazine. The teenagers are violinist Averil Collins,
daughter of Mr. and Mrs. M. P. Collins, 4 W. Village Cr., Spring Hill;
trombonist Monty Dukes, 14, son of
Mr. and Mrs. Vernon M. Dukes, 319
Bromley Pl., and cellist Ann Kendall,
13, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Curtis
Kendall, 2151 Wilson Ave.”
Compiled by Cammie East Cowan
from issues of the Mobile Register
MOBILE REGISTER
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KATRINA
AT A GLANCE
Associated Press
LOUISIANA
Breaches in at least one levee allowed water from Lake Pontchartrain to inundate sections of
New Orleans. Officials planned to
use helicopters to drop
3,000-pound sandbags into the
breach.
Dozens of people rescued
from roofs and attics. Canal Street
was literally a canal. Water lapped
at the edge of the French Quarter.
Unknown number of deaths.
Highest wind in New Orleans
estimated at about 100 mph.
Some 370,000 customers estimated without power in southeast
Louisiana; number expected to
rise. New Orleans water unsafe to
drink without boiling.
Entire city of New Orleans,
city of 485,000, ordered evacuated
before storm struck. Mayor Ray
Nagin estimated 80 percent of the
city’s residents left.
Thousands remained in New
Orleans Superdome, where storm
ripped two holes in the vast roof;
authorities forbid them to leave.
New Orleans police made
several arrests for looting.
Quote: “At first light, the devastation is greater than our worst
fears. It’s just totally overwhelming.” — Louisiana Gov. Kathleen
Blanco.
MISSISSIPPI
As many as 80 deaths possible, said Gov. Haley Barbour. That
includes estimated 50 people in
coastal Harrison County, with
about 30 of those at one beachside apartment complex in Biloxi.
At least 800,000 customers
statewide without power, utilities
said.
Casinos that dot the coast are
closed. Emergency officials had
reports of water reaching the third
floors of some of the barge-mounted casinos.
More than 1,600 Mississippi
National Guardsmen activated.
Storm swept sailboats onto
city streets in Gulfport and obliterated hundreds of waterfront
homes, businesses, community
landmarks and condominiums.
A foot of water swamped the
emergency operations center at
Hancock County courthouse —
which sits 30 feet above sea level
— and the back of the courthouse
collapsed.
Quote: “There’s just nothing
left. It’s never going to be the
same. It’s over.” — Jack Crochet,
56, of Biloxi, looking at wreckage
of his house near the beach.
ALABAMA
Two deaths.
About 718,000 homes and
businesses without power.
Flooding reached 11 feet in
Mobile, matching record set in
1917, according to National
Weather Service. Water up to
roofs of cars in downtown Mobile
and bayou communities. Piers
ransacked and grand homes
flooded along Eastern Shore of
Mobile Bay.
Major bridge over the Mobile
River remained closed Tuesday; it
was struck by an oil drilling platform that floated away from a shipyard.
Quote: “She said she was in
water up to her chin,” Kim Stringfellow said of woman and five children brought to shelter at church
in Bayou La Batre.
GEORGIA
One death; person killed in a
car accident amid stormy weather.
Nearly 25,000 customers
without power.
More than 30 buildings damaged or destroyed by tornado in
west Georgia’s Carroll County.
TENNESSEE
Flash flood warnings were in
effect across western Tennessee,
where up to 4 inches of rain fell. At
late morning, storm remnants were
centered about 25 miles south of
Clarksville.
About 80,000 customers were
without power.
Thousands of evacuees from
Mississippi and Louisiana sought
shelter in Tennessee.
KENTUCKY
Rainfall of 3 to 5 inches forecast from Katrina’s remnants.
Most of Kentucky was under
a flood watch until Wednesday
morning.
FLORIDA
Deaths: 11, according to state
tally on South Florida strike last
week.
77,000 customers were without power Tuesday morning in the
Panhandle, hit by eastern edge of
storm Monday. In South Florida,
155,262 customers still without
power Tuesday morning.
MOBILE REGISTER
Alabama picks up after Hurricane Katrina
៑ Continued
from Page 1A
has befallen the Mississippi Coast
and southeast Louisiana.
By Tuesday morning, Katrina’s
storm surge, possibly the highest
ever recorded in some parts of Mobile County, had receded. The
sounds of raking and chainsaws
joined the clatter of generators Tuesday morning, as Mobile-area residents began dragging batch after
batch of hurricane debris to the curb.
More than 250,000 people statewide remained without power. Lesser
numbers lacked phone service, and a
handful of coastal areas were without
water or under orders to boil it. Some
other municipal services were also affected. The city of Mobile suspended
household garbage pickup because of
tree-choked streets.
Stores were largely reopened
Tuesday, and at least one area college will open today. Mobile and
Baldwin public schools and other colleges remained closed through today.
Some will begin reopening Thursday,
but others, because of damage and
power outages, could be closed past
that time.
Nationwide, early estimates of privately insured damage ranged as high
as $25 billion, which would make Katrina the most expensive storm ever
to insurance companies, and even
more expensive than the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Total damages
are often twice insured damages. No
estimates of the cost of destruction
in Alabama alone were available
Tuesday.
Among the worst damaged areas
in Mobile County were Bayou La
Batre, Dauphin Island, and neighborhoods near Dog River. In Baldwin
County, the Eastern shore from Point
Clear south was the scene of major
troubles.
About 80 percent of the homes in
Bayou La Batre are now uninhabitable, due to Hurricane Katrina’s
floodwater, said Police Chief John
Joyner. Most of the rest have at least
some damage, he said.
The south Mobile County city of
less than 3,000 people had no power,
water, gas or even telephone service
Tuesday.
Roads were covered in mud, a reminder of the six or so feet of water
that city officials and residents said
filled the streets and city Monday.
Shrimp boats were stacked on top
of each other or thrown across the
water, sometimes landing on land.
“The shrimping boats were damaged. That’s people’s livelihoods.
Plus, these people’s homes are ruined,” Joyner said. “It’s going to be
tough for the people down here for a
while.”
Amy Sprinkle said she’s not sure
when or if she’ll be able to return to
work at the Greer’s Food Tiger grocery store in Bayou La Batre. The
store was flooded and much of the
food ruined, she said.
“We don’t know what we’re going
to do,” Sprinkle said. “I don’t know
what they can do to Greer’s. It might
be damaged so much that they’d be
better off taking a bulldozer to it.”
Dauphin Island
A building inspector on Dauphin
Island surveyed the area Tuesday
morning, saying at least a third of the
homes on the barrier island’s west
end were destroyed by Katrina.
About another third were significantly damaged, and the rest suffered
moderate damage, according to Ginger Simpson, Dauphin Island town
clerk.
Washed out by water and wind,
huge chunks were missing from the
blacktop on the road leading to Dauphin Island. By early Tuesday evening, however, state authorities were
allowing people to cross the causeway and bridge with an escort.
All that remained of the Cedar
Point Pier, a popular fishing spot at
the north end of the Dauphin Island
bridge, were a few dozen pilings jutting from choppy waters.
The sand pumped in at the public
beach west of the elementary school
off Bienville Boulevard washed away,
leaving the area flat. Ground-level
condominiums near the public beach
were damaged extensively, with several feet of sand visible inside the
units.
An oil drilling platform washed
into shallow waters off Dauphin Island’s remote west end during Hurricane Katrina, but authorities were
not immediately sure Tuesday where
it broke from its moorings.
Both the Middle Bay and the Sand
Island lighthouses survived the
storm.
Dog River
North, on the western shore of
Mobile Bay, the high-arching Dog River Bridge served as a viewing station
for onlookers gazing at the destruction on both sides. Though some survived, most of the big pleasure boats
moored at Dog River Marina were either sunk, tipped over or shoved
onto land and dumped on their sides.
Paul Carlson, standing on the Mobile Bay side of the bridge, pointed
down at a cement slab with a few pilings sticking up. The old Wharf
House Restaurant, which recently
had become a branch of Wintzell’s
Oyster House, was nowhere to be
seen.
“That was a beautiful place and it
was always full on Saturdays and Sundays,” said Carlson. “Now there ain’t
nothin’. The whole place is gone.”
In Baldwin County, the worst
damage was along Mobile Bay south
of Fairhope and along the Fort Morgan peninsula. But officials in Orange
MIKE KITTRELL/Staff Photographer
Battleship Memorial Park aircraft maintenance employee Roger Hunter looks Tuesday at the damage to the aircraft
pavilion caused by Hurricane Katrina.
Beach and Gulf Shores indicated that
recovery will take days instead of
months and much of the area will be
ready to host tourists for the Labor
Day weekend.
Trees and downed power lines
were reported all across the county
after the storm, officials said. Baldwin
County Engineer Cal Markert said
that he hopes to have all the county
roads passable by Tuesday night except for Ponce De Leon Road in Fort
Morgan, which was reportedly washed out.
Point Clear
At Point Clear, the Grand Hotel
was inundated. Storm surge ripped
through the ballroom, several dining
areas and first-floor guest rooms. The
hotel is closed indefinitely, with offduty State Troopers hired by the hotel guarding the entrances. General
Manager David Clark said an announcement regarding the hotel’s future would be made within the next
three weeks.
Further north along the bay,
where the steep Ecor Rouge rises,
some wind damage was reported, including as many as 30 stores damaged in downtown Fairhope.
Storm surge washed the planks
off the Fairhope Pier, just like many
smaller wharves. The foundation and
pilings beyond the halfway point of
the pier may have shifted. The flood
tide also ruined piers at Daphne
parks, wreaked havoc at the Eastern
Shore’s three yacht clubs, and washed into some homes in Olde Towne
Daphne, where the bluff dips. During
the storm, Daphne police had to rescue eight people from condominiums
near the Lake Forest Yacht Club.
Residents returning to Bon Secour
and nearby Plash Island in southern
Baldwin County saw less damage
than Ivan. A few boats were overturned and some residents lost piers.
But homeowners said the floodwaters did not come close to reaching
homes sitting atop wood pilings.
Along Baldwin’s Gulf beaches, the
worst damage was incurred by the
beach itself. A 14-mile-long, $26 million manmade beach is credited with
saving beach houses and condo towers, but it lost an estimated 35 to 40
percent of its sand.
Surveyors are expected within the
week to make an official assessment
of the erosion, which the Federal
Emergency Management Agency will
pay to repair.
Preliminary data compiled from
National Hurricane Center advisories
show that Katrina made landfall
around 6 a.m. Monday halfway between Grand Isle, La., and the mouth
of the Mississippi River, followed by
another landfall near Long Beach,
Miss., around 10 a.m., according to
Andy Stasiowski, a meteorologist
with the National Weather Service in
Mobile.
A storm surge of 12 feet was detected in downtown Mobile, 14 feet in
Bayou La Batre, and surges of 7 to 9
feet at other points. The peak gust recorded at the Mobile Regional Airport reached 83 mph around 11 a.m.
Monday.
Wind gusts may have reached
near 100 mph in parts of Mobile,
Washington and Choctaw counties of
Alabama along the Mississippi state.
Gusts may have reached near 65 mph
as far east as Evergreen, and 55-60
mph as far as Andalusia, said Randy
McKee, head of the National Weather
Service in Mobile.
As of midday Tuesday, three Alabama counties — Mobile, Baldwin
and Washington — had been declared disaster areas eligible for both
individual and infrastructure assistance from the Federal Emergency
Management Agency.
Officials said there was significant
damage in Washington County. Riley
cited the town of Chatom in particular.
Three other counties — Clarke,
Choctaw and Sumter — were declared eligible only for infrastructure
assistance. That means that local
governments can get help paying for
overtime and debris removal, for example, but citizens can’t get money
for hurricane-related home repairs.
Other counties are often added to
the declaration as the extent of damage becomes known. U.S. Rep. Artur
Davis, D-Birmingham, asked Gov. Bob
Riley to add Greene, Pickens and Tuscaloosa counties.
Without power
Power outages were most concentrated in Mobile County, where nearly 192,000 customers lacked service
Tuesday evening, and in counties further north along the Mississippi border. Outages were less severe in
Baldwin County, where about 25,000
customers had no lights.
Statewide, as many as 800,000
people lost power at Katrina’s height.
Alabama Power spokesman Bernie Fogarty declined to give an estimate on how long the 195,000
customers in the Mobile area could
expect to wait before having power
restored, only saying loss of service
would be “prolonged.”
In Baldwin County, power had
been restored to most customers by
Tuesday afternoon. Baldwin EMC reported 20,700 customers still had no
service Tuesday.
Riviera Utilities officials said
about 90 percent of their 35,000 customers would have the lights back on
by Tuesday evening.
In Fairhope, power was restored
to about 85 percent of homes and
businesses in the city by Monday
night, with everyone else expected to
have power by the end of the day
Tuesday, Mayor Tim Kant said.
In Mobile County, customers of
the Bayou La Batre and Dauphin Island water systems were warned to
boil their water. So were customers
of the Mobile County Water, Sewer
and Fire Protection District south of
Laurendine Road and anyone who
drinks from a private well where
flood waters covered the well head.
The Gulf Shores Utilities Board issued a boil-water order for people living in the areas south of 12th Avenue
in Gulf Shores and west of Kiva Dunes
on the Fort Morgan Peninsula.
Transportation
Progress remained spotty on the
transportation front, too.
The Bankhead Tunnel reopened
to traffic Tuesday at 10 a.m., said Department of Transportation spokesman Tony Harris. The lower-lying
Causeway remained closed, as state
officials investigated possible damage to the bridge over the Tensaw
River. The Cochrane-Africatown USA
bridge reopened Tuesday evening
once state officials decided it was
safe for traffic. An oil rig crashed into
it during the storm.
The Wallace Tunnels carrying I-10
traffic reopened earlier Tuesday.
Traffic was limited to one lane each
way for a time Tuesday, however,
causing traffic delays.
Harris said the road surface inside the tubes is wet but there is no
standing water. Auxiliary pumps were
being used to help the built-in pumping system, he said.
Traffic on Interstate 65 was
smooth, officials said, as it appeared
many evacuees, especially from Louisiana and Mississippi, were following
warnings not to return home yet. Officials at the Alabama Department of
Tourism and Travel said that hotels
along I-65 remained at or near capacity as far north as Birmingham, with
any rooms vacated by evacuees being filled immediately with hurricane
relief workers.
For
information,
visit
www.800alabama.com
or
call
800-ALABAMA (800-252-2262).
Other storm refugees remained in
shelters. The American Red Cross
had opened 48 shelters by Tuesday
and was serving 4,243 people as of 11
a.m. Red Cross spokeswoman Melissa
George said 35 more shelters were on
standby, ready to open should demand exceed current capacity. She
said demand could increase as evacuees from Mississippi and Louisiana
leave hotels or realize they are unable to return home.
In Mobile County, both the regular and the medical needs shelter remained open at Baker High School.
There were 402 people in the regular
shelter and 69 in the medical needs
shelter Tuesday afternoon. In Baldwin County, about 100 people remained in shelters run by the Red
Cross in one church apiece in Fairhope, Foley and Bay Minette.
Isolated instances of looting were
reported Sunday and Monday on Wilson Avenue in Prichard, in Alabama
Village in Prichard and on Hillcrest
Road in Mobile. In addition, at least
39 people were cited for violating curfew in Mobile Monday night.
A 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew remained in effect in Mobile County.
There was also a sunset-to-sunrise
curfew for residents on the eastern
shore of Mobile Bay south of Fairhope, and an 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew
in Gulf Shores.
The Alabama National Guard mobilized 1,600 members, said spokesman Lt. Col. Bob Horton. The Guard
is running an emergency operations
center at Mobile’s Fort Whiting. By
noon Monday, 350 Guard personnel
were working in Alabama, primarily
in Mobile and Baldwin counties, Horton said. An additional 450 Guard personnel were en route to the state’s
coastal counties on Tuesday, he said.
Their responsibilities include search
and rescue; security support; helping
distribute commodities such as food,
water and ice; and other needed humanitarian assistance.
Steve Huffman, spokesman for the
Mobile County Emergency Management Agency, said officials were still
working on the plans and will announce soon when the debris pickups will be made.
Meanwhile, Huffman said, residents can go ahead and clean up
their yards and put tree limbs and
other yard debris on the curb. He
said officials do not yet know how
long it will take for all the debris to
be picked up.
Because many Mobile streets are
still impassable, Huffman said, city
trucks will not pick up household garbage. Instead, Mobile residents can
bring their garbage to several city
parks daily beginning today from 7
a.m. to 5 p.m. Those sites are: Cottage Hill Park, Trimmier Park, Langan
Park, Figures Park, Kidd Park and
Rickarby Park.
Huffman said garbage can be
brought to those parks, even on Saturdays and Sundays, until garbage
trucks can resume their routes.
Authorities began distributing ice,
water and meals at 10 sites in Mobile
at noon Tuesday. Two more sites are
supposed to open today, with all
sites operating from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.
A Salvation Army feeding site is supposed to open in Bay Minette today.
Many stores across southwest Alabama reopened Tuesday, although
in some cases, it was for cash-only
business in a darkened building. Power was on in parts of major business
districts along Airport Boulevard and
Schillinger Road, in Foley and Bay
Minette
Gasoline supplies remained spotty, in part because many stations had
no power. Long lines built up at the
gasoline stations that had reopened.
“People were trying to get gas, and
we had our hands full controlling the
situation,” Sgt. Steve Stafford of the
Saraland Police Department, talking
about stations there.
Compared with the damage along
the waterfront, and the unfolding catastrophe to the west, standing in
line at the Piccadilly at Colonial Mall
Bel Air may not be much to complain
about. But as Shelby noted, there is
still plenty of damage in Alabama.
“We dodged the biggest part of
the bullet, but we caught a lot of it
too.”
(Staff Reporters and editors Casandra Andrews, Connie Baggett,
Bill Barrow, Virginia Bridges, Ron
Colquitt, Eddie Curran, Ryan Dezember, Cammie East, Bill Finch,
Russ Henderson, Brendan Kirby,
Kim Lanier, Dan Murtaugh, Penelope McClenny, Gary McElroy, Nadia
Mohandessi, Rena Havner, Sallie
Owen, Jeb Schrenk and George Talbot contributed to this report. The
Associated Press also contributed.)
MOBILE REGISTER
ᑹ 5A
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installation is available upon request.
6A ᑹ
MOBILE REGISTER
Mississippi coast residents are tourists of their own tragedy
៑ Continued
from Page 1A
The devastation in coastal Biloxi
was on a grand scale. Two or three
blocks on the north side of Beach
Boulevard, just east of Interstate 110,
had been leveled, with piles of rubble
indicating where buildings stood.
An employee of the Beau Rivage
Hotel and Casino, just across the
street from that demolished area,
gasped when she saw the hole in the
back of her building. Just a short time
later at the same corner, two teenage
boys dismantled a street sign and ran
off with their souvenir.
People roamed throughout the
wreckage freely. One man shouted
with glee as he found another bottle
of liquor.
Several people milling about said
they made it through the storm just a
couple of blocks from the water.
Bob Mahoney of Mary Mahoney’s
restaurant stood outside his building
with cuts on his face and a bandaged
leg. He said he had been standing at a
window on the second floor of his
building when a wave crashed in and
sent glass flying.
He said he hadn’t decided how he
would deal with his destroyed business.
“President Bush is going to have
to come up with some unprecedented
help for this area,” Mahoney said.
A few doors down, construction
workers who until last weekend had
been working on the Hard Rock Casino — which had been scheduled to
open next week — stood outside trying to make a phone call.
“We lost our home, we lost our
car, we lost our job. I just don’t know
what to do,” said Hernandez Moises.
He and 10 other workers stayed in
their working class apartments, just
up the hill from the destroyed Bombay Bicycle Club restaurant, during
the storm.
Rising water forced them to leave
their first-floor apartment, he said. On
the second floor, three of the men
were in a bedroom when the wind
started to push the wall in. At first,
they tried to hold the wall up, but
then they ran into another room, and
then into an apartment on the other
side of the building.
Moises tried to secure his car from
floating away during the storm, but
another car floated into it. Then, Monday night, the other car caught on
fire, and he and his friends had to put
it out.
He still hoped to get his car running. First, though, he needed money
— his company normally sends his
paychecks by FedEx, which, like everything else in the area, was out of
service. They had just a bit of food
left. “Tomorrow, we’re out,” he said.
In inland Ocean Springs, the damage seemed arbitrary, noted Bradley
Randall, who walked through a harbor
to look at the boats lying onshore.
Some houses were missing sections of
roofs, others had trees lying on top,
while some houses were unscathed.
“I didn’t even lose a shingle,”
Randall said as he walked through the
Ocean Springs Harbor, where rising
waters had scattered 25 boats onshore, pushing three boats against
one house.
The waves crashed through one
side of the houses and out the other
— evidenced by a Venetian blind bent
outward on the opposite side of the
harbor on one house.
An enormous champagne bottle
sat upright about a foot from a “King
of the Hill” DVD.
“This is the most awesome thing I
have ever seen,” said Lucy Thompson
as she walked around the rudder of a
boat that towered over her.
Luxury cars were scattered haphazardly. Two Acuras at one house
appeared to have been backed up
against the house, apparently pulled
back by the receding waters.
Not far away, the eastern wall of
the Oak Park Elementary School had
collapsed, exposing desks with little
chairs stacked on top. There were
tennis balls on the feet of each chair,
so the school’s floors wouldn’t be
scratched.
The hurricane’s wrath was much
more uniform — and catastrophic —
on East Beach, where all of the 20 or
30 homes were gutted or leveled.
The storm surge tore apart the entire first floor of many homes and left
the second floor intact.
A colorful, yet somewhat spooky,
collage of fabric and plastic hung
from trees 25 feet high.
Julia Platt and her family picked
up their belongings at her home,
where the front steps were the most
obvious evidence of the former twostory house. She said she was somewhat consoled at finding some of her
belongings, including her iron skillet
and a yellow colander handed down
from a deceased relative.
Everything that she and the other
residents couldn’t find was somewhere up in the wooded neighborhood.
People walked through the debris
on their way down a road that was
slick with mud, slowly baking in the
sun. About 200 yards of the road was
covered with a thick mat of pine
straw, piers, rafters, siding and whatever else was picked up by the wind
and waves.
“It only gets worse, bro,” a teenage
boy said to those making their way toward the beach.
One man warned the people to be
careful of live wires lying among the
debris. A tiny crab ran sideways in
the middle of the road.
At the University of Southern Mis-
sissippi aquarium and research laboratory, at the end of East Beach, two
buildings had been demolished, and
vehicles were pushed up against another one higher on the hill.
Down the beach from Platt’s
house, Joel Knight was assessing the
damage at his two-story home. There
were no floor or walls on the first
floor, with just a few beams, a waterdamaged ceiling and some bricks left.
His sons hanged on the studs and balanced on the leaning floor joists.
Judging by the damage, Knight
said, the surge had risen about 25 feet
from the shore. His porch is 16 feet
up, and the water reached nearly to
the top of the 10-foot ceiling.
He said he cried Monday night
when he returned to his “dream
home” after the storm, but Tuesday
he was in better spirits. The first task
was to look for belongings, and then
he would start thinking about what
parts of the house he could save.
“We’ve got insurance, and we’ve
got our health,” he said. “And if
you’ve got those, then you can start
over.”
He acknowledged the loss of various possessions and heirlooms, but
he said Katrina caused his family to
reconsider that.
“We’ve got too many things —
boats and Jet Skis,” he said. “Maybe
this is a call for simplifying life a little
bit. That’s going to be our plan: simplify.”
PETER COSGROVE/Associated Press
The Palace Casino in Biloxi, Miss., slumps partially underwater Tuesday after Hurricane Katrina slammed the Gulf Coast the day before.
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ᑹ 7A
MOBILE REGISTER
Judge in Aruba decides about Dutch suspect today
៑
Van der Sloot may
be released after three
months in custody
By MARGARET WEVER
ORANJESTAD, Aruba — A
judge will decide today whether to release a Dutch suspect
held for nearly three months in
the disappearance of Natalee
Holloway, a defense lawyer
said Tuesday.
Joran van der Sloot, 18, was
arrested June 9 along with two
friends, Surinamese nationals
Satish Kalpoe, 18, and Deepak
Kalpoe, 21, on suspicion of involvement in her disappearance. The Kalpoe brothers
were released July 4, when van
der Sloot’s detention was prolonged until Sept. 4, and re-arrested last week.
Van der Sloot’s lawyer, Richie Kock, told The Associated
Press that judicial authorities
informed him a judge would decide today on the detention of
his client in Aruba, a Dutch
Caribbean island where suspects may be held for up to 116
days without charge.
Van der Sloot maintains his
innocence, Kock said.
Prosecutors said Tuesday
they had filed a motion to keep
van der Sloot detained another
30 days. They must offer additional evidence against van der
Sloot on Wednesday or he
must be released, according to
Aruban law.
The Kalpoe brothers were
arrested Friday, when a judge
ruled that prosecutors had
enough evidence to hold them
for at least eight days while
AP photo
Jennifer Porter leaves the
courtroom after pleading guilty
Tuesday in Tampa, Fla.
Teacher
guilty in
2 hit-run
deaths
Associated Press
TAMPA, Fla. — A former
teacher pleaded guilty Tuesday
to leaving the scene after her
car struck and killed two young
brothers and injured two of
their siblings.
Jennifer Porter will be sentenced to up to three years in
prison at an October hearing. If
convicted at trial, she could
have received a 15-year sentence for leaving the scene of
the March 2004 accident.
The children were struck by
Porter as they returned home
from a community center near
the newly opened elementary
school where Porter was working as a dance teacher.
Bryant Wilkins, 13, and his
brother Durantae Caldwell, 3,
were killed, and their 8-year-old
sister and 2-year-old brother
were injured.
“Jennifer is throwing herself
on the mercy of this court and
the community, and we hope
the court, after hearing all the
facts, will do what we ask, and
that is not to put Jennifer in
jail,” attorney Barry Cohen
said.
She drove to her parents’
home and did not come forward for five days. She said a
white van had struck the children first, throwing them into
her car, but investigators concluded the van was not involved. Porter has said she didn’t
stop because she was too
scared.
Find
Find it
it in
in
CLASSIFIED!
they build their case.
Holloway, 18, of Mountain
Brook, Ala., was last seen May
30 leaving a bar with the Kalpoes and van der Sloot, hours
before she was to end a vacation celebrating her graduation.
No one has been charged.
A third man was arrested
with the Kalpoes but his lawyer
said Monday that it was unrelated to Holloway’s disappearance.
Freddy Alexander Zedan-Arambatzis, a friend of van der
Sloot and the Kalpoes, was arrested on suspicion of having
unspecified “physical contact”
with a female minor, said his
lawyer, Diana Emerencia.
Zedan-Arambatzis, 21, is also
suspected of photographing
the girl in “tempting poses”
and showing the images to other people, Emerencia said.
The Kalpoe brothers and van
der Sloot are also suspected of
involvement in the incidents,
which allegedly occurred before Holloway disappeared, she
said.
Emerencia said Zedan-Arambatzis has denied having any
physical contact with the girl
or taking photos of her, but has
admitted to being present
when the photos were taken.
The prosecutor’s office declined to comment on the case.
8A ᑹ
MOBILE REGISTER
U.S. ambassador says Iraqi
constitution could change
៑
Meanwhile, U.S.
warplanes strike
suspected al-Qaida
targets
By ROBERT H. REID
SUSAN WALSH/Associated Press
President Bush meets WWII veteran Robert Wakefield as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld looks on following a ceremony commemorating the 60th anniversary of VJ Day on
Tuesday at the Naval Air Station North Island in San Diego.
Bush: U.S. must keep
Iraq from terrorists
By JENNIFER LOVEN
CORONADO, Calif. — President Bush on Tuesday answered growing anti-war
protests with a fresh reason
for American troops to continue fighting in Iraq: protection of the country’s vast oil
fields that he said would
otherwise fall under the control of terrorist extremists.
The president, standing
against a backdrop of the imposing USS Ronald Reagan,
the newest aircraft carrier in
the Navy’s fleet, said terrorists would be denied their
goal of making Iraq a base
from which to recruit followers, train them and finance
new attacks.
“We will defeat the terrorists,” Bush said. “We will
build a free Iraq that will fight
terrorists instead of giving
them aid and sanctuary.”
Appearing at the Naval Air
Station North Island to commemorate the anniversary of
the Allies’ World War II victory over Japan, Bush compared his resolve now to
President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s in the 1940s and said
America’s mission in Iraq is
to turn it into a democratic
ally just as the U.S. did with
Japan after its 1945 surren-
der.
But Democrats said Bush’s
leadership falls far short of
Roosevelt’s.
“Democratic
Presidents
Roosevelt and Truman led
America to victory in World
War II because they laid out a
clear plan for success to the
American people, America’s
allies and America’s troops,”
said Democratic Party chairman Howard Dean. “President Bush has failed to put
together a plan, so despite
the bravery and sacrifice of
our troops, we are not making the progress that we
should be in Iraq. The troops,
our allies and the American
people deserve better leadership from our commander in
chief.”
The speech was Bush’s
third in just over a week defending his Iraq policies, as
the White House scrambles
to counter growing public
concern about the war. But
the devastation wrought by
Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf
Coast drew attention away,
as the White House announced during the president’s remarks that he was
cutting his August vacation
short to return to Washington to personally oversee the
federal response effort.
BAGHDAD, Iraq — In a dramatic shift, the U.S. ambassador raised the possibility
Tuesday of further changes to
Iraq’s draft constitution, signaling that the Bush administration has not given up its
campaign to push through a
charter that will be broadly accepted.
Also Tuesday, U.S. warplanes
struck three suspected al-Qaida targets near the Syrian border, killing what the U.S.
military called a “known terrorist.” Iraqi officials said 45 people died, most in fighting
between an Iraqi tribe that supports the foreign fighters and
another that opposes them.
The nation’s Sunni Arabs
had demanded revisions in the
draft, finalized last weekend by
the Shiite-Kurdish majority
over Sunni objections. A Shiite
leader said only minor editing
would be accepted since the
draft was now ready for voters
in an Oct. 15 referendum.
But Ambassador Zalmay
Khalilzad told reporters he believed “a final, final draft has
not yet been, or the edits have
not been, presented yet” — a
strong hint to Shiites and
Kurds that Washington wants
another bid to accommodate
the Sunnis.
“That is something that Iraqis will have to talk to each
other (about) and decide for
themselves,” Khalilzad said,
speaking alongside a major
Sunni Arab community leader
who denounced the current
draft and accused the Shiitedominated government’s security forces of assassinating Sunnis.
The Bush administration
wants a constitution accept-
able to all Iraqi factions to help
quell the Sunni-dominated insurgency so that U.S. and other
foreign troops can begin to go
home.
Shiite leaders had no comment on Khalilzad’s remarks.
As constitution wrangling drew
to a close last week, Shiite officials complained privately that
the Sunnis were stonewalling
and that further negotiations
were pointless.
Influential Shiite lawmaker
Khaled al-Attiyah, a member of
the constitution drafting committee, insisted Tuesday that
“no changes are allowed” to
the draft “except for minor edits for the language.”
Sunnis objected primarily to
federalism, which would create
Kurdish and Shiite mini-states
and threaten Sunni access to
oil wealth; purges of former
members of Saddam Hussein’s
Sunni-dominated Baath Party
from government; and the description of Iraq as an Islamic
but not Arab state, lumping it
together with Shiite-dominated
Iran.
Shiites consider some of the
Sunni demands, especially on
the Baath party and federalism,
as matters of principle not subject to compromise.
“From a legal point of view,
no change can be made to the
draft,” Shiite negotiator Hussein Athab said. “If (Khalilzad)
means legal change, then this
is not allowed. If he means political change, I don’t know
what he means.”
But signs were clear that
Washington did not feel constrained by legalities and was
ready to pressure the Shiites
after more than two years of
deferring to the Shiite clergy
on key steps in Iraq’s transition
— moves that helped drive
apart the Sunnis and the Americans.
Before addressing reporters,
Khalilzad warmly introduced
Sunni community leader Adnan
al-Dulaimi and then stood by as
he accused security forces of
the Shiite-led Interior Ministry
of murdering Sunnis. Al-Du-
laimi demanded the resignation of Iraq’s interior minister,
a member of the biggest Shiite
party.
Both Shiites and Sunnis have
accused one another of reprisal killings. The Interior Ministry has denied targeting
Sunnis.
Sunni Arabs form an estimated 20 percent of the population. They could still scuttle
the charter because of a rule
that states that if two-thirds of
the voters in any three provinces reject the draft, it would
be defeated.
The U.S. airstrikes, which included
500-pound
GBU-12
guided bombs, began about
6:20 a.m. in a cluster of towns
near Qaim along the Syrian
border 200 miles northwest of
Baghdad, a U.S. statement said.
It made no mention of tribal
fighting but said four bombs
were used to destroy a house
occupied by “terrorists” outside the town of Husaybah.
Two more bombs destroyed a
second house in Husaybah, oc-
cupied by Abu Islam, described
as “a known terrorist,” the
statement added.
“Islam and several other suspected terrorists were killed in
that attack,” the statement
said. Several of Islam’s associates fled his house in Husaybah
for the nearby town of Karabilah, the statement said, citing
intelligence reports.
“Around 8:30 a.m., a strike
was conducted on the house in
Karabilah using two precisionguided bombs,” the statement
said. “Several terrorists were
killed in the strike but exact
numbers are not known.”
Iraqi officials said most of
the 45 dead were from the progovernment Bumahl tribe and
the pro-insurgent Karabilah
tribe, which have clashed before. The Shiite Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in
Iraq condemned attacks by foreign fighters against “our beloved people” and urged the
government to “stop criminals
and terrorists from crossing
into Iraq.”
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ᑹ 9A
MOBILE REGISTER
SAT math scores for class of 2005 hit record high
៑
But gaps between
racial groups remain
and officials said they are troubled by the comparative lack of
progress in scores on the test’s
verbal section.
Last year’s seniors averaged
520 out of a possible 800 on the
math portion, 2 points higher
than the class of 2004. Average
scores on the verbal section
were unchanged at 508,
according to results released
Tuesday by the College Board,
the nonprofit organization that
owns the SAT.
While this year’s increase
was modest, “over the last 13
years the increase in math
By JUSTIN POPE
AP Education Writer
The high school class of 2005
earned the highest-ever marks
on the math portion of the SAT,
a modest change that continues the steady 25-year trend of
improvement on the country’s
most popular standardized college entrance exam.
Significant gaps between racial groups remain, however,
More students taking SAT than ever
Almost half of this year’s nearly 3 million high school graduates took the
SAT, the test that most non-profit colleges and universities use for
admissions.
2005 Average
SAT math and
verbal scores
470 - 490
491 - 520
551 - 580
581 - 610
MATH
521 - 550
VERBAL
D.C.
D.C.
Trend in mean math
and verbal scores
SAT participation rate
0-20%
21-40 %
41-60%
61-80%
81-100%
520
520
515
Math score
508
510
505
Verbal score
D.C.
500
1995
2000
Minority students more than one-third of SAT takers
Asian American 10%
White 62%
African American 12%
NOTE: Does not add to 100 percent due to rounding
2005
Other
Hispanic 4%
Other
Mexican
6%
American 5%
Source: Educational Testing Service
AP
Census: Poverty rate
rises to 12.7 percent
By JENNIFER C. KERR
Democrats seized on the
numbers as proof the nation is
headed in the wrong direction.
“America should be showing
true leadership on the great
moral issues of our time — like
poverty — instead of allowing
these situations to get worse,”
said John Edwards, the former
North Carolina senator and
Democratic vice presidential
candidate. He has started a
poverty center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill.
Overall, the nation’s poverty
rate rose to 12.7 percent of the
population last year. Of the 37
million living below the poverty level, close to a third were
children.
The last decline in overall
poverty was in 2000, during the
Clinton administration, when
31.1 million people lived under
the threshold. Since then, the
number of people in poverty
has increased steadily from
32.9 million in 2001, when the
economy slipped into recession, to 35.8 million in 2003.
The increase in poverty
came despite strong economic
growth, which helped create
2.2 million jobs last year — the
best showing for the labor market since 1999. By contrast,
there was only a tiny increase
of 94,000 jobs in 2003 and job
losses in both 2002 and 2001.
WASHINGTON — Even with a
robust economy that was adding jobs last year, the number
of Americans who fell into poverty rose to 37 million — up 1.1
million from 2003 — according
to Census Bureau figures released Tuesday.
It marks the fourth straight
increase in the government’s
annual poverty measure.
The Census Bureau also said
household income remained
flat, and that the number of
people without health insurance edged up by about
800,000 to 45.8 million people.
“I was surprised,” said Sheldon Danziger, co-director of
the National Poverty Center at
the University of Michigan. “I
thought things would have
turned around by now.”
While
disappointed,
the
Bush administration — which
has not seen a decline in poverty numbers since the president
took office — said it was not
surprised by the new statistics.
Commerce
Department
spokeswoman E.R. Anderson
said they mirror a trend in the
’80s and ’90s in which unemployment peaks were followed
by peaks in poverty and then
by a decline in the poverty
numbers the next year.
ON THE NET
“We hope this is it, that this
is the last gasp of indicators for Census Bureau:
www.census.gov
the recession,” she said.
scores has been about 19
points, and that’s fairly significant,” said Wayne Camara, the
group’s director of research, at
a news conference Tuesday.
The College Board also released its first glimpse of data
on the new version of the SAT,
which features a writing section with an essay, and which
members of the class of 2006
began taking last spring. Those
students appeared to find the
new section the hardest, with
average scores of 516, compared to 519 in critical reading
(the new name for verbal) and
537 in math.
“Those scores will come
down a little bit, the reason being the best and most aggressive students always take them
in the spring,” said College
Board President Gaston Caperton.
For the class of 2005, scores
improved for all ethnic groups,
though significant gaps remain.
Composite scores for black students rose 7 points to 864, but
that remains more than 200
points below the average composite score for white students.
Over the last decade, composite scores for Asian-American students have shown the
greatest improvement, increas-
ing 44 points to 1091. Disparities in the kinds of courses
taken by different groups remain a major obstacle to narrowing races gaps, the College
Board said. It pointed out, for
instance, that 44 percent of
Asian-American students take
calculus in high school, compared to just 14 percent of African-Americans.
“It’s unfair to those kids who
don’t get to take those good
courses and don’t get the
chance to go to college,” Caperton said.
Camara said racial breakdowns for scores on the new
writing test would not be released until next year, but he
expects them to be narrower
than on the other sections.
Some critics have predicted
the new writing section is biased against minority students
and will exacerbate the gap.
The math scores come at a
time when a variety of tests —
on students of varying ages
and measuring different kinds
of skills — are presenting
mixed signals about what if any
progress American students
are making in math.
Figures released in July from
the National Assessment of Educational Progress showed the
nation’s 9- and 13-year-olds re-
corded their highest math
scores ever, but scores for
17-year-olds were flat.
“Math achievement is going
up in the United States in the
long term,” said Jack Jennings,
president of the independent
Center on Education Policy in
Washington, D.C. “It is not,
however, where kids in the
United States ought to be.”
ON THE NET
College Board:
www.collegeboard.com/
10A ᑹ
MOBILE REGISTER
Militants linked to al-Qaida
in SE Asia share bomb designs
ASSASSINATION PROBE
ANALYSIS: This story is based on
investigative reports on several
bombings, army and police interrogations of arrested Jemaah
Islamiyah trainers and interviews with government security
officials and a foreign diplomat
who monitors terror threats.
By SAM F. GHATTAS
By JIM GOMEZ
MANILA, Philippines — AlQaida’s Southeast Asian ally is
sharing bomb-making expertise
with Muslim militants in the
Philippines, providing at least
nine explosive designs and
eight chemical recipes to help
ragtag
insurgents
become
more lethal, according to government reports.
The results: 116 people killed
in the country’s worst terror
attack, a series of high-tech explosions and close cooperation
among local and foreign militants using the southern Philippines as a training ground
following the loss of al-Qaida
camps in Afghanistan.
While U.S.-backed offensives
have
overrun
established
camps in the Mindanao region
in the last couple of years,
training by al-Qaida-linked Jemaah Islamiyah’s Indonesian
operatives has continued on a
limited basis with militants setting up classes and plotting attacks, police and military
intelligence officers told The
Associated Press.
One Philippine security official said Mindanao in the
southern part of the country
“is like a terrorist academy”
with trainees taught how to
make bombs, plant them, then
set them off in test missions
designed to help militants perfect their techniques to complete the course.
Jemaah Islamiyah militants
appear to be continuously testing new designs and explosives
mixtures, said officials, who
spoke on condition of anonymity because of the secretive nature
of
the
information.
Previously, many Philippine
militants, especially Abu Sayyaf
rebels, had relied on simple
hand and rocket-propelled grenades to attack civilian targets.
Investigators looking into
Sunday’s bombing of a passenger ferry while it was boarding
on Basilan island, injuring 30
people, said it appeared to be
designed more to sow panic
than kill, but that it was too
early to speculate on the design.
A number of recent bombs
— pieced together from fragments found at attack sites or
recovered from Philippine rebel hideouts — carry Jemaah Islamiyah’s signature: the use of
electronics, including Indonesian-designed integrated circuit
boards, and cell phones that allow more efficiency and flexibility as triggers, according to
several investigation reports
seen by AP.
Making detection difficult,
the attackers use mundane
items — a TV set, egg cartons,
a tin of cookies, even a tube of
toothpaste, a roll-on deodorant
or shampoo bottle — to hide
AP photo
The blast that devastated this passenger ferry in Manila Bay,
Philippines, in February 2004, killing 116 people, was made by a
bomb that could be set off by an alarm clock or a cell phone. Terrorist attackers are using everyday items to hide their bombs and
make detection more difficult.
the bombs and their components.
More powerful chemical mixtures not used before by local
militants also have been detected at bombing scenes in recent years, the reports said.
The new mixtures give the
militants more leeway in attaining a particular effect. Some
spark fires to scare extortion
targets; others are designed to
kill and destroy.
Authorities said they have
detected evidence of al-Qaida
and Jemaah Islamiyah “training
and technology transfer” in
bomb devices for the past four
or five years.
Such international cooperation and terror technology exchanges is not entirely new.
When police in 1995 raided
the Manila apartment of Ramzi
Yousef, the convicted mastermind of the 1993 bombing of
the World Trade Center in New
York, they found several juice
bottles filled with the same
powerful explosives used in
that attack and a brand of
quartz alarm clock later used
in a bombing in Iraq.
Most of the bombs used in
attacks in the Philippines and
Indonesia are believed to have
been designed by Jemaah Islamiyah’s top experts, including Pitono, a Bali bombing
suspect and electronics expert
also known as Dulmatin, the reports said.
The army has been hunting
for Dulmatin, along with at
least nine other Indonesian militants, in the region of Minda-
nao, where he is thought to
have joined the group of Abu
Sayyaf chieftain Khaddafy Janjalani, the military said.
Philippine authorities have
detected mostly cell phonetriggered explosives while poring over bloody scenes of attacks by the Abu Sayyaf and
the Moro Islamic Liberation
Front in the last five years,
according to investigation reports.
The Indonesians also have
passed on the formulas of at
least eight powerful explosive
chemical mixtures, the reports
said, and authorities in both
countries have found identical
bombs rigged the same way in
the metal frames of two strikingly similar bicycles.
Local militants — many
young peasants with limited
schooling — appear to be
struggling with the new technology. Blunders have fouled
up some attacks, including a
homemade bomb that prematurely exploded in a backpack
two years ago, killing the rebel
toting it.
Filipino militants have not
yet undertaken suicide missions, although there is evidence that they have acquired
knowledge to make body-worn
explosives and truck and car
bombs. Car bombs used in an
attack at Manila’s airport in December 2000 and an airport in
southern Cotabato city in February 2003 appear to have been
set off by timers, security officials said.
“We call them ‘baby al-Qaidas,’ ” said Ric Blancaflor, executive
director
of
the
government’s
anti-terrorist
task force. “We have no reason
to believe that they are already
experts.”
High-level suspects
named in Lebanon
out in the country, particularly by targeting the commander of the Presidential
BEIRUT, Lebanon — The Guards Brigade, Brig. Gen.
United Nations named four Mustafa Hamdan, who propro-Syrian generals and a for- vides security for and is an
mer legislator as suspects associate of pro-Syrian PresiTuesday in the February as- dent Emile Lahoud, a bitter
sassination of former Prime political foe of Hariri. HamMinister Rafik Hariri — the dan voluntarily appeared for
first major break in a crime questioning.
that transformed Lebanon.
Lahoud said the sumU.N. investigators were in- monses were not arrests and
terrogating the men at a hill- praised Hamdan as “one of
top hotel overlooking Beirut the best officers in the Lebaafter searching the generals’ nese army.”
homes. The Lebanese governBesides Hamdan, the genment, acting at the request of erals swept up in Tuesday’s
the U.N., detained three of actions were: Maj. Gen. Jamil
the suspects; a fourth surren- Sayyed, former chief of the
dered for questioning
powerful General Seand a fifth returned
curity department;
from Syria, promising
Maj. Gen. Ali Hajj,
to cooperate.
former police chief;
The moves against
and Brig. Gen. Raysuch once-powerful
mond Azar, former
generals and politihead of military incians — who had
telligence.
readily executed SyThe four generals
rian policy in Lebaalready have been
non — would have
questioned by Gerbeen unthinkable a
man prosecutor Detfew
months
ago Mustafa
lev Mehlis, the U.N.
when the country Hamdan
chief
investigator
and its government Suspect named
who requested that
were still under Sythe men be sumrian control.
moned.
But Syria’s troop withdrawDetails of the investigation
al in April has turned the are secret and nothing was
country’s power structure on known about what evidence
its head. After Hariri’s assas- led to the detentions. All of
sination, Damascus ended its those being interrogated
nearly three-decade domina- were still in custody late
tion of the country under in- Tuesday and could not be
tense
domestic
and
reached for comment. They
international pressure. New
parliamentary
elections have not been visited by lawswept anti-Syrian politicians yers.
Three other officers and
into government.
Tuesday’s startling devel- Hamdan’s brother also were
opments, however, still could detained for questioning,
produce serious political fall- state television reported.
ᑹ 11A
MOBILE REGISTER
HURRICANEKATRINA
KATRINA
P.J. Ralph surveys damage
Tuesday to what remains of
the Quietwater Beach
apartments complex in Biloxi.
Authorities believe at least 30
people lost their lives in the
complex when Hurricane
Katrina made landfall Monday.
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Nothing left but pile of rubble
at deadly apartment in Biloxi
By HOLBROOK MOHR
BILOXI — Joy Schovest
swam for her life, fighting Hurricane Katrina’s storm surge
and its angry winds, brushing
aside debris and floating cars
to reach higher ground.
Behind her, at least 30 of her
neighbors in the Quiet Water
Beach apartments were dying,
trapped in their crumbling twostory building as it was swept
away with much of this Mississippi coast community Monday.
“We grabbed a lady and
pulled her out the window and
then we swam with the current,” said Schovest, 55, breaking into tears. “It was terrifying.
You should have seen the cars
floating around us. We had to
push them away when we were
trying to swim.”
The tragedy at the apartment building represented the
biggest known cluster of
deaths caused by Katrina. Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour
said the death toll in the county where Biloxi is located could
be as high as 80.
The only remaining evidence
of the Quiet Water Beach apartments was a concrete slab surrounded by a heap of red
bricks that were once the
building’s walls. A crushed red
toy wagon, jewelry, clothing
and twisted boards were mixed
in with the debris. The fourlane road that separated the
building from the beachfront
was buckled and covered with
rubble.
“This is all that’s left of my
house,” said nearby resident
Jack Crochet, 56, shaking his
head and looking at the rubble.
“It’s never going to be the
same. It’s over.”
The storm also inflicted a
punishing blow to Biloxi’s waterfront casinos, down the
beach from the apartment
building. The Grand Casino
gambling barge and a second
casino broke away from their
moorings, ending up in a ditch
now filled with water and slot
machines.
“Basically, it’s a total loss,
and that’s in excess of $100 million to replace what was lost
here,” Bernie Burkholder, president and chief executive of
Treasure Bay Casino in Biloxi,
said as he walked around the
casino property.
People examined the slot
machines to see if they still
contained coins, and looting
broke out in other areas of Biloxi.
“People are just casually
walking in and filling up garbage bags and walking off like
they’re Santa Claus,” said Marty Desei, owner of a Super 8
motel in Biloxi. “I haven’t seen
anything like this in my whole
life.”
The lucky ones in the Quiet
Water Beach apartment building and other vulnerable areas
of Biloxi described a scene of
pandemonium as they fled the
rising water. When asked why
they ignored evacuation orders, some said they did not
think the storm would be that
bad; others would not give a
reason.
Apartment tenant Landon
Williams, a 19-year-old construction worker, said he and
his grandmother and uncle ran
from the crumbling building as
the storm hit. As they later
swam through the swirling water and debris, “we watched
the apartments disintegrate.
You could hear the big pieces
of wood cracking and breaking
apart.”
He said the winds flung twoby-fours and drywall.
“I lost everything. We can’t
even find my car,” he said. “I’m
looking through this wreckage
to see if I can find anything
that’s mine. If not, I’m moving
on. I think I’ll move on to North
Carolina and do some work
over there. I can’t take it here
anymore — not after this.”
Williams said six of his
neighbors in the building who
remained behind also survived.
“As the second story collapsed,
they climbed onto the roof and
part of it floated away and they
floated to a house that made
it,” he said.
Paul Merritt, 30, surveyed
the damage in Biloxi with his
18-year-old wife and their
3-month-old son, Brandon. He
said the water rose to the second story of his townhouse,
which is less than a block off
the beach.
“I’ve never seen destruction
of this magnitude,” Merritt
said. “You see this stuff on TV
and you hope that it never happens to you. Everything’s
gone.”
Ida Punzo rode out the storm
with a friend and two neighbors in her 130-year-old home
on the beachfront in Biloxi.
The first two floors of the old
house were almost completely
gone, but she survived.
“It was a miracle,” Punzo
said. “This place is held together with God’s spit. We’re not
supposed to be alive.”
(Associated Press Writer
Jay Reeves contributed to
this report.)
12A ᑹ
MOBILE REGISTER
HURRICANEKATRINA
KATRINA
Katrina could cost insurers up to $25 billion
៑
Hurricane might be most
expensive catastrophe in
American history
By GEORGE TALBOT
Business Reporter
With insured losses of $25 billion,
Hurricane Katrina could exceed Hurricane Andrew and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks as the most expensive
catastrophe in American history, financial and insurance experts said
Tuesday.
As insurance adjusters began
working their way into areas hammered by the storm, early estimates
of Katrina’s cost to insurers ranged
from $9 billion to $25 billion. The
higher figure would put Katrina’s toll
above Hurricane Andrew, which
slammed into south Florida in 1992,
killing 40 people and costing insurers
about $21 billion, adjusted for inflation.
The Sept. 11 attacks cost insurers
about $20 billion, though some claims
are still being paid, according to industry officials.
Katrina “definitely ranks as one of
the most expensive storms we’ve ever
seen in this country. The loss of life is
just staggering, and the financial cost
will be significant,” said Jeanne Salvatore, a spokeswoman for the New
York-based Insurance Information Institute, a research group funded by
property and casualty insurers.
The devastating Category 4 storm
swept over the northern Gulf Coast
on Monday, pounding coastal Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama with
145 mph winds and one of the highest
storm surges in a century.
The Boston-based risk modeler
AIR Worldwide Corp. estimated that
Katrina would cost the insurance industry between $17 billion and $25
billion. Risk Management Solutions
Inc. of Newark, Calif., projected insured losses between $10 billion and
$25 billion.
Jayanta Guin, AIR’s vice president
of research and modeling, attributed
the higher estimates to Katrina’s size,
noting that “hurricane-strength winds
extended more than 120 miles from
the center of the storm, from Baton
Rouge to east of Mobile and over 200
miles inland.”
Oakland, Calif.-based Eqecat Inc.
on Tuesday lowered its estimate to
between $9 billion and $16 billion,
after initially projecting losses of up
to $30 billion as the storm approached New Orleans.
“As bad as it is, it was looking a lot
worse,” said Tom Larsen, a senior
vice president at Eqecat.
The estimates did not include
flood losses, which generally are not
covered by homeowners’ policies, nor
damage to offshore industry in the
Gulf of Mexico. Total losses are often
double the insured loss, according to
insurance officials.
New York-based Fitch Ratings said
it expected Katrina’s cost would be in
line with the 1994 Northridge earthquake in California, which cost about
$16 billion, but cautioned that many
adjusters had yet to gain access to
the hardest-hit areas in New Orleans
and along the Mississippi coast.
“The range of loss estimates is
necessarily wide because this event is
still ongoing,” said Donald Thorpe, a
senior director with Fitch Ratings.
Thorpe said he expects the spread
of loss through the insurance industry to be different than in the 2004
hurricane season, with reinsurers taking a greater proportion of the loss.
Reinsurance companies sell backup coverage to other insurers,
spreading risk so the system can handle huge losses from major disasters.
Munich Re, the world’s biggest
reinsurance company, said its initial
estimate for Katrina’s cost was between $15 billion and $20 billion.
Insurers are unlikely to be able to
raise premiums in the wake of Katrina
as they often can do after natural disasters, said J. Paul Newsome, an analyst at A.G. Edwards Inc. in St. Louis.
Nationally, rates have been declining
since last year after three years of
post-Sept. 11 price increases, he said.
“You need something to happen
that has never happened before,”
Newsome said. “Anything that would
create confusion among underwriters
and create fear.”
(The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
Emergency services try to deal
with unimaginable devastation
By MARILYNN
MARCHIONE
AP Medical Writer
The hospital is crowded and
hot. Surgeries go on with the
help of generators. A teen arrives by boat after giving birth
in a hotel. And outside, a
steady stream of homeless,
frightened people seek refuge.
This was the scene Tuesday
at New Orleans’ Ochsner Clinic, the eye of the hurricane as
far as medical care is concerned.
Federal officials said that
2,500 patients in the drowning
city were being evacuated because at least seven hospitals
in Orleans Parish were threatened by the loss of their power
generators and other problems.
Perched a lofty 8 feet above
sea level in Jefferson Parish,
Ochsner is one of the few in
the area still up and running.
“We don’t have unlimited capacity. We are trying to take in
only those patients with lifethreatening illnesses,” Dr. Joe
Guarisco, director of the emergency department, told The As-
sociated Press in a phone
interview.
On Tuesday, that included
two near-fatal electrocutions of
people who tried to return to
flooded areas, and others who
were injured by flying glass
when wind and water smashed
their shelters.
Even at the clinic, broken
glass littered some areas, and
patients and staff alike had fallen on floors slick with hurricane waters. With electricity
and air conditioning out,
generators were providing the
only power. Some areas had no
working elevators or phones.
But there was ample water,
food, blood and medical supplies to do everything needed,
and enough power to keep
medical machinery humming,
hospital officials said, crediting
the plans and preparations
made before the storm hit.
Several women gave birth
during the ordeal, each baby
announced with a tune over
the loudspeaker.
“Nobody named one Katrina
yet,” said clinic spokeswoman
Katherine Voss.
Guarisco worries about peo-
ple unable to get to a hospital.
There were about 400 patients
Tuesday, but room for 580 at
the clinic, which is affiliated
with Louisiana State and Tulane universities.
There were no emergency
communications between hospitals, and Guarisco, like others, had heard horror stories
like one reported by the New
Orleans Times-Picayune that
Charity Hospital had been
forced to manually ventilate
patients after electricity and
backup generators failed.
Like much of the staff, Guarisco has been on duty since
Sunday. His wife, director of information technologies at the
clinic, also is considered essential staff, so the couple brought
their children, ages 3 and 11, to
work with them.
Guarisco said he left briefly
Tuesday around noon and
walked a mile to check on their
home, which suffered some
flooding but only mild damage.
“It looks like a Steven Spielberg movie set out there,” he
said. “The only people you see
are people with shotguns protecting their property.”
MATT ROURKE/AP, Austin American-Statesman
Officer N. Daggs trudges through Hurricane Katrina’s floodwaters to search for fuel to siphon to run
generators at Bywater Hospital in New Orleans on Monday. The generators are used to power
equipment for patients unable to be transported.
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ᑹ 13A
MOBILE REGISTER
Rescuers race to save stranded residents of New Orleans
៑ Continued
we were trying to swim.”
“What I’m authorized to say
now is we expect the death toll
to be higher than anything
we’ve ever seen before,” said
Jim Pollard, civil defense
spokesman for Mississippi’s
Harrison County, which includes Biloxi and Gulfport.
Asked if the toll could be
higher than Hurricane Camille
in 1969 when 131 were killed in
Mississippi and 40 went missing, Pollard referred back to
his statement and said, “That
would be higher wouldn’t it?”
Said Biloxi Mayor A. J. Holloway: “This is our tsunami.”
Looting became a problem in
both Biloxi and in New Orleans,
in some cases in full view of police and National Guardsmen.
One police officer was shot in
the head by a looter in New Orleans, but was expected to recover, Sgt. Paul Accardo, a
police spokesman.
On New Orleans’ Canal
Street, which actually resembled a canal, dozens of looters
ripped open the steel gates on
clothing and jewelry stores,
some packing plastic garbage
cans with loot to float down
the street. One man, who had
about 10 pairs of jeans draped
over his left arm, was asked if
he was salvaging things from
his store.
“No,” the man shouted,
“that’s EVERYBODY’S store!”
from Page 1A
“We’re not even dealing with
dead bodies,” Nagin said.
“They’re just pushing them on
the side.”
The flooding in New Orleans
grew worse by the minute,
prompting the evacuation of
hotels and hospitals and an audacious plan to drop huge
sandbags from helicopters to
close up one of the breached
levees. At the same time, looting broke out in some neighborhoods, the sweltering city
of 480,000 had no drinkable water, and the electricity could be
out for weeks.
With water rising perilously
inside the Superdome, Blanco
said the tens of thousands of
refugees now huddled there
and other shelters in New Orleans would have to be evacuated.
She asked residents to spend
today in prayer.
“That would be the best
thing to calm our spirits and
thank our Lord that we are survivors,” she said. “Slowly, gradually, we will recover; we will
survive; we will rebuild.”
All day long, rescuers in
boats and helicopters pulled
out shellshocked and bedraggled flood refugees from rooftops and attics. The Coast
Guard said it has rescued 1,200
people by boat and air, some
placed shivering and wet into
helicopter baskets. They were
brought by the truckload into
shelters, some in wheelchairs
and some carrying babies, with
stories of survival and of those
who didn’t make it.
“Oh my God, it was hell,”
said Kioka Williams, who had
to hack through the ceiling of
the beauty shop where she
worked as floodwaters rose in
New Orleans’ low-lying Ninth
Ward. “We were screaming,
hollering, flashing lights. It was
complete chaos.”
Frank Mills was in a boarding
house in the same neighborhood when water started swirling up toward the ceiling and
he fled to the roof. Two elderly
residents never made it out,
and a third was washed away
trying to climb onto the roof.
“He was kind of on the edge
of the roof, catching his
breath,” Mills said. “Next thing
I knew, he came floating past
me.”
Across Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, more than 1
million residents remained
without electricity, some without clean drinking water. An
untold number who heeded
evacuation orders were displaced and 40,000 were in Red
Cross shelters, with officials
saying it could be weeks, if not
months, before most will be
able to return.
Emergency medical teams
from across the country were
sent into the region and President Bush cut short his Texas
vacation Tuesday to return to
Washington to focus on the
storm damage.
Federal Emergency Management Agency director Mike
Brown warned that structural
damage to homes, diseases
from animal carcasses and
New Orleans is apt to stay
awash for days under oily,
filthy water infested with mosquitoes, even if failed levees
can be fixed quickly, according
to experts assessing the flooding left by Hurricane Katrina.
An initial sense of relief that
the city escaped the storm’s
worst dissolved Tuesday, as an
estimated 80 percent of the
180-square-mile city gradually
turned into an urban swamp.
“While everyone knew this
could happen, I don’t think
anyone was really prepared for
it,” said oceanographer Paul
Kemp, at Louisiana State University’s Hurricane Center.
“There are some disasters beyond comprehension, and I
think this is one of them.”
Murky water, laced with junk
and pollutants, coursed
through the city, including
many downtown streets. Residents and rescuers came
across floating bodies, though
the city’s death toll was still
unknown late Tuesday.
Flooding specialists pre-
Insurance experts estimated
the storm will result in up to
$25 billion in insured losses.
That means Katrina could
prove more costly than recordsetting Hurricane Andrew in
1992, which caused an inflation-adjusted $21 billion in
losses.
Oil prices jumped by more
than $3 a barrel on Tuesday,
climbing above $70 a barrel,
amid uncertainty about the extent of the damage to the Gulf
region’s refineries and drilling
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A New Orleans resident wades through floodwaters coated with a fine layer of oil in the flooded
downtown area Tuesday. Hurricane Katrina pounded the area when it made landfall Monday, and
water was still rising in the Crescent City on Tuesday.
chemicals in floodwaters made
it unsafe for residents to come
home anytime soon. And a
mass return also was discouraged to keep from interfering
with rescue and recovery efforts.
That was made tough
enough by the vast expanse of
floodwaters in coastal areas
that took an eight-hour pounding from Katrina’s howling
winds and up to 15 inches of
rainfall. From the air, neighborhood after neighborhood looked like nothing but islands of
rooftops surrounded by swirling, tea-colored water.
In New Orleans, the flooding
actually got worse Tuesday.
Failed pumps and levees apparently spilled from Lake Pontchartrain into streets. The
rising water forced hotels to
evacuate, led a hospital to
move boatlift patients to emergency shelters, and drove the
staff of New Orleans’ Times-Picayune newspaper out of its of-
fices.
Officials planned to use helicopters to drop 3,000-pound
sandbags into the breach, and
expressed confidence the problem could be solved. But if the
water rose a couple feet higher,
it could wipe out the water system for the whole city, said
New Orleans’ homeland security chief Terry Ebbert.
In devastated Biloxi, Miss.,
areas that were not underwater
were littered with tree trunks,
downed power lines and
chunks of broken concrete.
Some buildings were flattened.
The string of floating barge
casinos crucial to the coastal
economy were a shambles. At
least three of them were picked
up by the storm surge and carried inland, their barnacle-covered hulls sitting up to 200
yards inland.
The deadliest spot yet appeared to be Biloxi’s Quiet Water Beach apartments, where
authorities said about 30 peo-
Experts say New Orleans
could be flooded for days
By JEFF DONN
Outside the broken shells of
Biloxi’s casinos, people picked
through slot machines to see if
they still contained coins. “People are just casually walking in
and filling up garbage bags and
walking off like they’re Santa
Claus,” said Marty Desei, owner
of a Super 8 motel.
dicted that conditions could
worsen as authorities focused
first on saving people trapped
in buildings.
Some flood-control pumps
were broken, choked by excess
water or storm debris. Others
were lacking power needed to
run. Roofs were reported collapsed on at least two major
pumping stations. Without the
pumps, much of the flood water will have nowhere to drain
in this city cradled within a
bowl, at an average of six feet
below sea level.
In a frustrating catch-22, it
will be hard to fix the pumps
and restore their power while
they are under water, but it’s
hard to drain the water without
the pumps, the flood experts
warned.
“It’s going to be days before
they get all that water out,”
said marine scientist Ivor van
Heerden, also of LSU, who developed flooding models for
the city. He was out with a boat
inspecting water levels Tuesday.
When the hurricane’s eye
veered away from the city Monday morning, the fiercest winds
and storm surge bashed into
the coast east of New Orleans.
Though some neighborhoods
flooded, most of the city was
spared severe flooding in the
immediate aftermath. By early
Tuesday, however, waters
were creeping into large parts
of the mostly evacuated city,
which is normally home to
about 484,000 people.
This flood water apparently
came from at least two levee
breaks — at the Industrial Canal and the 17th Street Canal,
according to the LSU specialists.
Helicopters were dumping
3,000-pound sandbags onto the
levees, beginning the task of
trying to plug them.
The experts warned of potential dangers ahead. Louisiana’s frequent summer rains —
or even another hurricane —
could add to flooding in coming days or weeks, they said.
The sitting water could collect
more contaminants from
homes and industries, and
mosquitoes could amplify the
danger of disease.
“Because it doesn’t drain,
there’s a chance for things to
concentrate,” said Marc Levitan, another flooding expert at
LSU.
ple were washed away. All that
was left of the red-brick building was a concrete slab.
“We grabbed a lady and
pulled her out the window and
then we swam with the current,” 55-year-old Joy Schovest
said through tears. “It was terrifying. You should have seen
the cars floating around us. We
had to push them away when
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MOBILE REGISTER
HURRICANEKATRINA
KATRINA
Storm surge wipes out much of Causeway
៑
Roadway will remain closed until
repairs are made
By SUSAN DAKER
Staff Reporter
Waves and the storm surge that flooded the
Causeway collapsed part of the eastbound lane
of the bridge over the Tensaw River, offset an
Interstate 10 entrance ramp and destroyed businesses and several seafood restaurants along
the low-lying road that traverses Mobile Bay.
The Causeway remained closed Tuesday as
Alabama Department of Transportation crews
worked on both the Admiral Semmes Bridge and
the ramp.
It was unknown when the Causeway would
reopen, ALDOT officials said. Motorists trying to
avoid the I-10 traffic and sight-seers were
banned from the Causeway, but business owners and residents were allowed to survey the
damage.
“It’s just not safe for anyone to go down
there,” said Spanish Fort Mayor Joe Bonner.
Bonner said he visited his restaurant, Cock
of the Walk, and the storm surge had destroyed
its elevator.
Water levels reached almost to the Cock of
the Walk’s door, at least 16 feet above the
ground, said Spanish Fort Police Chief David Edgar.
Home to many of Mobile Bay’s best seafood
restaurants and Battleship Memorial Park, the
Causeway was impassable until early Tuesday,
Edgar said.
Battleship Park sustained extensive damage
of between $1.5 million and $2 million and the
storm left the USS Alabama listing, officials said.
Katrina’s storm surge, which was at least 12
feet high in downtown Mobile, flattened Argiro’s
country store, a landmark for the area.
Somewhere in Mobile Bay is the store’s tin
roof, the gas pumps from the Exxon station
across the street and a blue Volvo station wagon left abandoned nearby, Edgar said.
“It’s not there; I assume it’s in the water,”
said Edgar as he surveyed the damage from his
car.
The Blue Gill Restaurant was nearly destroyed and the Shoulder, a drug addiction
treatment center, also suffered great damage.
The bottom floor and deck of the Original Oyster House were swept away with the waves
too.
Part of Oyster House’s sign remains standing
in the parking lot but no longer advertises a
playground or says “We Love Kids.”
All the restaurants sustained damage but the
Beach House Grill, Ed’s Seafood Shed and Felix’s
Fish Camp probably fared the best, the police
chief said. Drifters, a late night hang-out for a
quarter of a century, survived without much
damage, said Charlotte McKenna, who owns the
lounge with her husband.
The stairs to the elevated wood-frame busi-
ness will need to be replaced as well a few shingles, McKenna said. The fishing camp
underneath Drifters was destroyed and a crab
boat was left turned upside down, she said.
“I’ll feel pretty lucky compared to other people on the Causeway,” she said.
Residents of Pineda Island had already begun cleaning up their homes, placing soggy furniture on their lawns.
D.V. Williams, a resident of Pineda Island
since 1958, said he had about 5 feet of water in
his home which overlooks the Blakeley River.
“It looks like it’s been put into a great mixer,” said Williams, who celebrated his 70th wedding anniversary on the island in May.
Williams said he told his wife, Erma, that
more than 70 years ago he decided that as long
as he had her, nothing else mattered.
“Thank God I still have her,” he said. “That’s
all I need. ...
“This is the price you have to pay to live in
such a wonderful place.”
Harry Johnson, owner of the The Blue Gill Restaurant, stands in the dining area
and looks at the damage caused by Hurricane Katrina on Tuesday. Johnson
has owned the restaurant since 1998. In the background is Kristie Andres,
whose husband, James, is manager of the restaurant.
The Original Oyster House is shown Tuesday in Spanish Fort. Hurricane Katrina
destroyed the downstairs section of the popular Causeway restaurant.
Photos by MIKE KITTRELL/Staff Photographer
The remains of Argiro’s country store on the Causeway are seen Tuesday in Spanish Fort after being hit by Katrina.
Ed’s Seafood Shed employee Chris Eddins of White House Forks, Ala., cleans
debris from where the deck once stood Tuesday.
Lawyers join others to mop up downtown mess
By ROY HOFFMAN
Staff Reporter
When David Constantine arrived at the building housing
the law offices of Lyons, Pipes
& Cook at 6:30 a.m. Tuesday
morning, he figured there
would be damage. Constantine,
the firm’s office manager for
the last 16 years, had watched
Hurricane Katrina’s storm
surge on TV.
“We knew we had some water in the building,” he said,
mopping out the entranceway
at Royal and Dauphin streets.
Six inches of water, indeed,
had flooded the ground floor.
“It carried dirt,” he said, “and
snails, and tiny fish.”
Constantine said that all legal records had been raised to
a level over where they
thought water might rise, many
put on the second floor. “We’ve
been through the whole building,” he said. “There were no
records messed up at all.”
As Constantine swabbed, he
directed a crew of 26 helpers,
some day laborers, who were
moving water-stained furniture,
some of it already splitting, and
tearing up soggy carpet.
The firm, said Constantine,
had laid the carpet only recently, at a cost of $55,000. Now it
looked like bunches of dark
blue wet towels heaped on the
walk.
But Constantine was philosophical. The firm had been in
downtown Mobile, he said, for
106 years. “This is just a blip,”
he said, wringing out the mop.
Throughout downtown Mobile, others were hard at work.
Men contracted by Alabama
Power Co. pumped out a seemingly endless stream of floodwater from a manhole next to
the AmSouth Bank building;
and a security guard kept
watch in front of the Whitney
Bank, kitty-corner from AmSouth. The guard noted that
windows, visible from the
street, had been broken out on
the second floor by the storm.
In Bienville Square, Allen
Reed, landscape supervisor
with the city of Mobile’s parks
department, was cleaning away
the million oak leaves scattered across the square with a
powerful blower. His crew,
wearing various head rags
against the brutal heat,
dragged fallen oak limbs and
MICHELLE ROLLS/Staff Photographer
U.S. Postal Service trucks parked in a post office parking lot on
St. Joseph Street in downtown Mobile are surrounded by water
from Hurricane Katrina’s storm surge Monday.
swept debris away near the
fountain.
The Auburn University graduate said his crew had started
by cleaning up Cathedral
Square early in the morning,
and after Bienville Square
would move on to Spanish Plaza, Cooper Riverside Park, Father Ryan Park and British
Park.
With most businesses still
boarded up, and nary a “Restaurant Open” sign in sight,
many workers enjoyed the generosity of the Little Kitchen on
Dauphin Street near Royal.
In the dim restaurant, with a
single light bulb brightening
the kitchen and the gas grill
going, owner Kim Newman
cooked up whatever was in the
refrigerator. At the doorway,
husband Kenny greeted policemen, firemen, and others with
the free, hot, boxed lunches.
The Newmans’ daughters, Jessica, 16, and Anna, 12, hurried
back and forth helping as well.
Kevin Cross, a manager with
Midstream Fuel, came in for a
box lunch, and chatted with
Kenny Newman. Cross said
Midstream has facilities in Biloxi and Pascagoula, and that
he had been doing what he
could at his offices in the AmSouth Building, “trying to get
communications back.”
The AmSouth Building itself
remained boarded up on its
ground floor.
Newman explained that he
and his wife had decided to
give out all the lunches because “we believe in helping
one another. We’re so blessed,” he said. “In Gulfport, and
in New Orleans, it’s been a total disaster.”
When not helping his wife at
the restaurant, Newman said,
he is a fireman with the city of
Mobile, with Truck 5 out of the
Tapia Station.
On State Street, at the corner
of Jackson, John Bridler, who
owns an office building there
and lives just behind it, was
picking up debris from the
street, while his wife Mary was
grilling pork chops at their
back door. During Katrina, Bridler worried about rising water, but never saw it as far
uptown as his building.
“Ivan was worse for us,” he
said.
Across the street from Bridler, Henry Newell sat on the
front porch of his raised Creole
cottage, built in 1836, trying to
catch a breeze. With the power
dead, his front door was open,
and a mattress lay on the floor
in the hallway.
“Last night we opened the
doors and put the mattress
down,” he said.
At 3 a.m., Newell said, he was
awakened by the police, shining a bright light in his open
door. The police, he said, were
checking to see if the house
was being robbed.
Newell told them that he
lived there. The police drove
on.
“When he left it went black
again. I said, ‘Doggone, I
thought the power had gone
back on!”
MOBILE REGISTER
HURRICANEKATRINA
KATRINA
RON COLQUITT/Staff Photographer
Hyundai executive Wonghee Yang is shown Tuesday in front of damaged containers at the Alabama
state docks. Car parts that are destined for the new Hyundai plant near Montgomery come through
the docks.
State docks takes big hit
៑
Ports from Morgan
City, La., to Pensacola
remain closed
By ANDREA JAMES
Business Reporter
The Alabama state docks
sustained some of its worst water damage ever when Hurricane Katrina pushed 12 feet of
water into the Mobile River on
Monday, docks Director Jimmy
Lyons said Tuesday.
Ports from Morgan City, La.,
to Pensacola remain closed
while officials scrambled to assess the extent of the damage.
The Gulf Coast plays host to
some of the nation’s largest
ports, which handle millions of
tons of cargo every year. Even
one port closure would have a
major economic impact,
according to Aaron Ellis, the
communications director for
Alexandria, Va.-based American Association of Port Authorities.
Though Lyons said even
“old-timers” could not remember a more devastating storm
surge, Mobile’s port may not
have suffered as much damage
as others along the coast, and
could potentially handle business from the other ports.
But Lyons said the existing
customers aren’t even being
taken care of as of Tuesday.
Hyundai executive Wonghee
Yang stood with his business
partners at the Port of Mobile
with his arms folded Tuesday,
surveying the mud-covered
state docks and a yard where
40-foot-long cargo containers
lay in disarray.
The Hyundai plant in Hope
Hull, just south of Montgomery, is low in inventory and
needs auto parts shipped to
Mobile from Korea to continue
plant operations, said Yang,
Hyundai’s director of purchasing.
But those shipping containers were among those scattered from neat piles into what
Lyons described as a “big
mess.”
“We want to keep our plant
running,” Yang said. “We cannot find our containers.”
Lyons told Yang, “We’re
going to put every resource we
can to getting the boxes out of
here.”
Trucks were to begin taking
cargo out of the port late Tuesday, but the trains won’t be operational right away, Lyons
said. Containerized cargo is not
the only problem at the docks,
which was just one of many riverfront enterprises battered by
Katrina.
RON COLQUITT/Staff Photographer
Mobile firefighters Jason Welch, front, Jared Parker and Ryan
Franklin hose mud out of the Alabama Cruise Terminal at
Mobile. Terminal officials said that Hurricane Katrina flooded the
bottom floor with about 4 feet of water and about a foot of mud.
Drift wood lay among the
stacks of aluminum and
blocked roadways. The roof of
a maintenance building at
McDuffie Coal Terminal was
blown off, and service vehicles
were flooded. Much of the cargo in warehouses was damaged
by stormwater.
“We’ve already got Home Depot calling us wondering when
they can get lumber out of
here,” Lyons said. Tuesday, a
bundle of lumber sat in the
middle of train tracks, carried
200 yards from its original location.
Port closures could cost the
U.S. economy from millions to
billions of dollars, especially as
goods linger in the Gulf, the
port association’s Ellis said.
The Port of South Louisiana
alone handles almost 200 million tons per year of cargo,
according to the U.S. Army
Corps of Engineers’ latest report in 2003.
“This is a very big deal. The
Port of Gulfport in Mississippi
has taken a pretty big hit,” Ellis
said. “Clearly, we just don’t
have all the information yet.”
Ships now awaiting port
openings will need to choose
whether to re-route. “It’s going
to be a decision they have to
make very soon,” Ellis said. “If
it’s going to be less time to reroute a ship than it is to try to
get it into a port, that’s going
to mean some considerable extra time and expense.”
In a recent 2005 survey, the
American Association of Port
Authorities asked ports about
the impact of one week’s closure. The survey found that the
economic impact could be
measured in billions of dollars,
Ellis said.
The Port of Gulfport said a
week’s closure would “severely” affect the textile trade, and
cost related businesses $3.5
million. Lost wages would be
$4.6 million, according to the
port’s estimates.
The Port of Mobile employs
thousands of people, with 580
working for the Alabama State
Port Authority alone.
In addition to economic impact, repairing the damage in
Mobile alone could cost millions of dollars, Lyons said.
The widespread damage may
slow the process, Lyons predicted.
About 15 steel warehouse
doors will need to be replaced,
costing about $15,000 each.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency and insurance
companies will help, he said.
One of three ships unable to
evacuate the port — the Fonarun Naree from Bangkok — was
gashed by the 13,000-ton oil
platform which broke loose
from moorings at Bender Shipbuilding & Repair Co. Inc. That
platform also rammed a berth
under construction at the state
docks, causing wood and iron
to fall into the water. The
pieces will have to be removed
from the channel by divers,
and repairs will cost up to
$400,000. It could be millions
more if divers find that the pilings were damaged, Lyons
said.
Further up the river, a mangled pile of steel and lumber jut
over the river where a barge
loader used to be, courtesy of
the runaway oil platform. It will
cost $4 million to replace the
barge loader, Lyons said.
Other ports in the United
States will try to help their Gulf
Coast counterparts, Ellis said.
“In regular business times,
ports compete,” Ellis said.
“When tragedy comes, ports
really join forces to help each
other out, and that’s what
we’re seeing now.”
ᑹ 15A
16A ᑹ
MOBILE REGISTER
HOWARD BRONSON JR.
President, Publisher and CEO
MOBILE
REGISTER
P.O. Box 2488
Mobile, AL 36652-2488
251-433-1551
MICHAEL MARSHALL
Editor
DEWEY W. ENGLISH JR.
Managing Editor
FRANCES COLEMAN
Editorial Page Editor
Editorials
Katrina’s awful and
historic destruction
C
ATASTROPHE IS a relative
term.
In isolation, we would
be wailing today about the
terrible damage to Dauphin Island
and Bayou La Batre, in parts of
Mobile County and on the Fairhope waterfront.
We would be pontificating on
the impact — literally and economically — of the oil rig wedged
up against the Cochrane-Africatown Bridge and the flooding of
downtown Mobile.
But when we look at New Orleans, Gulfport and Biloxi, words
fail us. Catastrophe, devastation,
disaster, horror: None of the journalist’s ready store of descriptive
phrases can convey the magnitude
of what Hurricane Katrina has
done.
And so instead of bemoaning
the disaster visited upon Mobile
and Baldwin counties, we give
thanks that it wasn’t worse. And
instead of complaining about the
power being out, we try to imagine
what it’s like to be inside the Louisiana Superdome with thousands
of refugees, a damaged roof, no air
conditioning, filthy bathrooms and
rising water outside.
It is the storm surge that picked up an entire casino from the
Mississippi shore and dropped it
in the middle of the highway.
It is the water that has washed
away homes and drowned dozens
of people in what Biloxi Mayor A. J.
Holloway likened to a tsunami.
No doubt the Category 4 winds
of Katrina did considerable damage in Mississippi, but massive
storm surge made the difference
between a bad hurricane and one
that will go down in history with
Camille, Betsy and Andrew.
What to do now?
This is not just a regional disaster, but a national one because of
the as-yet-unknown amount of
damage to oil and natural rigs in
the Gulf of Mexico.
Even if it’s only at the gas
pump, everyone will feel the effects of Hurricane Katrina.
Americans respond to people
in crisis, even when they’re on the
other side of the world, and they
will be called upon to respond
now.
The forces of federal, state and
local governments will move in as
fast as they can get to the Gulf
Coast. The American Red Cross is
Worst-case models right
mobilizing the biggest relief effort
The doomsday scenario — a
in its history.
Category 4 or 5 hurricane that hits
For now, people living in Mo“just so” — has been described so bile and Baldwin counties who
many times from Texas to Miami
didn’t suffer property damage can
that Gulf Coast residents tend to
help their neighbors as they
treat it as myth. The storm surge
usually do, checking on elderly rescould flood Mobile to Broad Street! idents who don’t have power and
It could cut Dauphin Island in two! taking in friends and relatives.
It could flood the entire city of
Regionally, residents can supNew Orleans!
port
friends and family who are
Truth is, years of near-misses
homeless
or temporarily displaced
inspired a certain complacency.
in New Orleans and on the MissisHurricane Ivan was bad enough,
sippi coast.
but the worst of the devastation
They can also stay out of the
was in Pensacola. Hurricane Dennis was supposed to be the dooms- way of trained emergency workers,
by not trying to sightsee and — esday storm, but it, like Ivan, jogged
right and hit just east of Pensacola. pecially — by not trying to get into
And how many times have resi- Mississippi and Louisiana right
now.
dents of New Orleans evacuated,
only to have the storm of the moAll Americans can donate monment go the other way?
ey to the American Red Cross or
When Katrina began to jog
another charity providing disaster
right, people who spend too much relief — not just now, but for
time watching TV and studying
weeks to come.
computer models nodded knowIt’s already obvious that the
ingly. It’s going to miss New OrHurricane Katrina relief effort will
leans again, the old hands thought. go on for many months.
It’s going to mess up the south
Most of all, people must be paMississippi coast and maybe Motient. For at least a few days, debile, but folks will clean up and repending on damage to the
build as they always do.
Causeway and the Cochrane
Now we know that those
Bridge, getting back and forth
doomsday scenarios aren’t just
across Mobile Bay will be harder
something cooked up by a bunch
of scientists and engineers playing and slower.
Moreover, the Mobile area may
with computer programs and trynot
see disaster relief as quickly as
ing to scare people.
And initial reports that New Or- Louisiana and Mississippi will.
But Mobile will come back,
leans wasn’t hit as hard as expected are proving, tragically, to
mostly, as it did after Hurricanes
be wrong.
Frederic and Ivan. However bad
Hurricane Katrina proved the
the damage proves to be in the
wisdom of the adage, “Run from
coming days, doomsday, this time,
the water, hide from the wind.”
didn’t come here.
J.D. CROWE/Mobile Register
Letters to the Editor
Taxpayers pay
for misplaced faith
Let’s consider the good and bad
about faith.
Faith in a religious sense is necessary because of the lack of evidence needed to maintain it
otherwise.
Faith in one’s government, however, is subject to much evidence.
For instance, we had faith in Clinton’s NAFTA and world-trade policies (we re-elected him), and now
we manufacture mostly hamburgers.
We had faith in the Cheney/Bush
Iraq war against weapons of mass
destruction (Congress agreed overwhelmingly), only to find out the
war was about oil and reconstruction profits.
So, instead of having faith in
what our leaders tell us, let’s do a
little thinking. Thinking leads us to
questioning and is the only way to
arrive at the best answer.
Who benefits from world trade
and who benefits from the war and
Iraqi reconstruction? Answer: military and industrial “special interests.”
Who pays for this misplaced
faith? You guessed it: We taxpayers.
What can we do about it? Nothing, as long as the “special interests” continue to bribe the
Congress people through their bagmen, the lobbyists.
BILL STEPHEN
Orange Beach
Terrorists attacking
us with gas prices
Right after the terrorist attacks
on New York and Washington, this
country went after the source of
terrorist money — the idea being, if
we cost them enough money we
would reduce their ability to fight
and/or attack us again.
I think that was a good idea. In
fact, it was so good, so effective,
that the terrorists have adapted it
to use against us.
But how can they reduce our
“funding”? How can they reduce the
power of the United States? Well,
how about gas at $3.50 a gallon?
An increase in the price of gasoline increases the price of everything in our economy. And isn’t it a
coincidence that most of our petroleum and Osama bin Laden come
from Saudi Arabia?
I believe we are under attack
right now, and while we’re checking
bags in subways and shoes at airports, the terrorists and their accomplices are robbing us
unopposed.
But we don’t have enough of our
own energy. We have to buy from
them. However, we can beat them if
we apply greater pressure to the oil
cartels while at the same time forcing the U.S. oil companies to create
an infrastructure to deliver hydrogen and auto manufacturers to produce hydrogen automobiles.
If the entire scientific might of
this country were directed at solving this problem, as it should have
been years ago, we would soon be
energy independent.
I know many people will say that
they don’t like the idea of government forcing private industry to do
something. I don’t like that idea, either, but I like it a lot better than
government sending our young men
and women overseas to convince a
bunch of religious fanatics to embrace democracy, and getting killed
or horribly wounded.
If we can stop terrorist attacks
and save our soldiers’ lives, I’m all
for government forcing private industry to change.
ROBERT RASCH
Mobile
Keeping freedom
through vigilance
Freedom and liberty, to me, are
born in your heart. To me, the
ACLU and others are not protecting
my freedoms. I did that in the Korean War, for which I volunteered. No
using the guise or subterfuge of protecting my freedoms of the Constitution can protect them. We have to
use vigilance in order to protect our
freedoms.
One of our founders, Benjamin
Franklin, said, “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.” He was
not talking about external threats;
he was talking about elected officials grabbing power and disfranchising the people, and saying that
they should be watched at all times.
Little by little our freedoms are
being chipped away from me and
others, but they are still here in my
heart. I love America. It does not
have a perfect government, but it is
way ahead of whatever is in second
place. Eternal vigilance will hopefully keep it that way.
I will and have fought for this
country with my dying breath, for
nobody can take away from me
what’s in my heart.
As for Iraq, trying to impose on
them what we know and feel is another question. You have to earn it
and want to keep it. But as to our
servicemen and women there, my
heart’s with them. I know in my
heart that if they feel about it as I
do, they’ll give it their very best.
I have seen some of the news reports and know that they are giving
it their best. If you read all of them,
and not just the ones about people
being killed, you’ll know they are
giving it their best.
My heart goes out to them and
the jobs they are doing. I know it’s
not in vain, even though some of
the people here take it for granted
for what they have.
WILLIAM G. REIGEL
Mobile
Antiwar protesters
want to surrender
President Bush bashers and the
media have compared the Iraq war
to Vietnam. The similarity is that
the antiwar protesters want to persuade Americans to join them in
surrendering. The media’s canonization of Cindy Sheehan encourages the terrorists attacking our
military by giving them hope America’s will can be weakened.
Casey Sheehan was 24 years old
when he re-enlisted in the U.S.
Army despite his mother’s objections. He volunteered to go on the
rescue mission in which he died.
His mother, Cindy, speaks for the
far left antiwar movement when she
says, “America is not worth dying
for” and that the war is being fought
“for Israel.” Her statements dishonor her son and all who serve.
Now many military families are
saying, “Cindy doesn’t speak for
us.” They are proud of the sacrifices made by their sons and daughters and do not want us to abandon
their mission in Iraq.
After we pulled out, millions died
in Cambodia and Vietnam. Abandoning Iraq would give the Islamic
terrorists a victory and embolden
them to rebuild training camps and
escalate their attacks.
All Americans should stand united with our military.
ED HYATT
Huntsville
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P.O. Box 2488
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Political preachers, such as Robertson, deliver misleading message
PORTSTEWART, Northern Ireland — Word of
Pat Robertson’s outrageous remarks recommending the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has reached this small
seacoast town. A local man asked me what I
thought of his comments. “Not
Cal Thomas much,” I replied with some embarrassment. I’m sure the non
Christian world is having a fine
time ridiculing this latest example of un-Christ-like behavior.
Robertson has made other
remarks over the years about
all sorts of things that have
nothing to do with the gospel
in which he says he believes. He is not alone. On
the right and on the left, ordained and self-proclaimed “reverends” and honorary “doctors” appear to spend more time trying to reform a fallen
and decaying world through politics and earthly
power than they do promoting and proclaiming
the ultimate answer to that fallenness.
While these apostles of political parties and
personal agendas have every right to make fools
of themselves, they are enabled in their foolishness by millions of people who blindly send
them money. These money-senders are looking
in the wrong place for their deliverance. While
paying lip service to eternity, they seem to prefer immediate political gratification.
Few would pay attention to political preachers if these ministers did not have access to television and radio. And they would not have TV
programs if people did not send them money
which, in addition to buying TV time, is used to
set most of them up in lifestyles that resemble
the “rich young ruler.” Jesus told the ruler to
“sell everything you have and give to the poor,
and you will have treasure in heaven” (Luke
18:22), but many TV preachers seem to expect
you to sell what you have and give to them.
Much of what is proclaimed as God’s will on
TV and in fundraising appeals is false religion.
People who respond with checks are either ignorant or willfully disobedient to what their spiritual commander-in-chief and the early apostles
taught and practiced.
One of the great pronouncements on a Christian’s relationship to the world is contained in 1
John 2:15-17: “Do not love the world or anything
in the world. ... For everything in the world —
the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes
and the boasting of what he has and does —
comes not from the Father but from the world.
The world and its desires pass away.”
Too many Christians think if they shout loud
enough and gain political strength the world will
be improved. That is a false doctrine. I have never seen anyone “converted” to a Christian’s
point of view (and those views are not uniform)
through political power.
Repeatedly in the Scriptures, which TV ministers regularly and selectively quote, are teachings, admonitions and commands that are
antithetical to the high-octane rhetoric spanning
the ideological and theological spectrum — from
Pat Robertson to Jesse Jackson.
Here is a partial list: God’s strength is made
perfect in human weakness; humble yourself and
God will exalt you; he who would be a leader
among you must first be your servant; love your
enemies; pray for those who persecute you; pray
in secret, not publicly; give to the poor; God has
chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; the last place at the table; the
widow’s mite (the message is that she gave all
she had, not great wealth); the mustard seed
(about the smallest amount of genuine faith); the
washing of feet (as demonstrated by Jesus).
These virtues are virtually absent among the
“resounding gongs and clanging cymbals” one
sees on TV.
If people who bear the label “Christian” want
to reduce these embarrassments, which interfere with the proclamation and the hearing of
“true religion,” they should refrain from sending
money to TV preachers and contribute more to
their local church.
Cal Thomas is a columnist with Tribune Media
Services. Readers may write to him at 435 N. Michigan Ave, Suite 1400, Chicago, Ill. 60611.
ᑹ 17A
MOBILE REGISTER
Now’s not the time to reduce FEMA’s responsibilities
ERIC HOLDEMAN
Special to The Washington Post
SEATTLE — In the days to come, as the nation and the people along the Gulf Coast work to
cope with the disastrous aftermath of Hurricane
Katrina, we will be reminded anew how important it is to have a federal agency capable of
dealing with natural catastrophes of this sort.
This is an immense human tragedy, one that
will work hardship on millions of people. It is
beyond the capabilities of state and local government to deal with. It requires a national response.
Which makes it all the more difficult to understand why, at this moment, the country’s
premier agency for dealing with such events —
the Federal Emergency Management Agency —
is being, in effect, systematically downgraded
and all but dismantled by the Department of
Homeland Security.
Apparently, homeland security now consists
almost entirely of protection against terrorist
acts. How else to explain why FEMA will no longer be responsible for disaster preparedness?
Given our country’s long record of natural disasters, how much sense does this make?
What follows is an obituary for what was
once considered the pre-eminent example of a
federal agency doing good for the American
public in times of trouble, such as the present.
FEMA was born in 1979, the offspring of a
number of federal agencies that had been func-
tioning in an independent and uncoordinated
manner to protect the country against natural
disasters and nuclear holocaust. In its early
years FEMA grew and matured, with formal programs being developed to respond to largescale disasters and with extensive planning for
what is called “continuity of government.”
The creation of the federal agency encouraged states, counties and cities to convert from
their civil defense organizations and to establish emergency management agencies to do the
requisite planning for disasters.
Over time, a philosophy of “all-hazards disaster preparedness” was developed that sought
to conserve resources by producing single
plans that were applicable to many types of
events.
But it was Hurricane Andrew, which hit Florida in 1992, that really energized FEMA. The year
after that catastrophic storm, President Bill
Clinton appointed James Lee Witt to be director
of the agency. Witt was the first professional
emergency manager to run the agency.
Showing a serious regard for the cost of natural disasters in both economic impact and
lives lost or disrupted, Witt reoriented FEMA
from civil defense preparations to a focus on
natural disaster preparedness and disaster mitigation. In an effort to reduce the repeated loss
of property and lives every time a disaster
struck, he started a disaster mitigation effort
called “Project Impact.”
FEMA was elevated to a Cabinet-level agen-
cy, in recognition of its important responsibilities coordinating efforts across departmental
and governmental lines.
Witt fought for federal funding to support
the new program. At its height, only $20 million
was allocated to the national effort, but it
worked wonders.
One of the best examples of the impact the
program had here in the central Puget Sound
area and in western Washington state was in
protecting people at the time of the Nisqually
earthquake on Feb. 28, 2001. Homes had been
retrofitted for earthquakes and schools were
protected from high-impact structural hazards.
Those involved with Project Impact thought
it ironic that the day of that quake was also the
day that the then-new president chose to announce that Project Impact would be discontinued.
The advent of the Bush administration in
January 2001 signaled the beginning of the end
for FEMA. The newly appointed leadership of
the agency showed little interest in its work or
in the missions pursued by the departed Witt.
Then came the Sept. 11 attacks and the creation of the Department of Homeland Security.
Soon FEMA was being absorbed into the “homeland security borg.”
This year it was announced that FEMA is to
“officially” lose the disaster preparedness function that it has had since its creation. The move
is a death blow to an agency that was already
on life support. In fact, FEMA employees have
been directed not to become involved in disaster preparedness functions, since a new directorate (yet to be established) will have that
mission.
FEMA will be survived by state and local
emergency management offices, which are confused about how they fit into the national picture. That’s because the focus of the national
effort remains terrorism, even if the Department
of Homeland Security still talks about “all-hazards preparedness.”
Those of us in the business of dealing with
emergencies find ourselves with no national
leadership and no mentors. We are being forced
to fend for ourselves, making do with the
“homeland security” mission. Our “all-hazards”
approaches have been decimated by the administration’s preoccupation with terrorism.
To be sure, America may well be hit by another major terrorist attack, and we must be
prepared for such an event. But I can guarantee
you that hurricanes like the one that ripped into
Louisiana and Mississippi on Monday, along
with tornadoes, earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis, floods, windstorms, mudslides, power outages, fires and perhaps a pandemic flu will have
to be dealt with on a weekly and daily basis
throughout this country.
They are coming for sure, sooner or later —
even as we are, to an unconscionable degree,
weakening our ability to respond to them.
Eric Holdeman is director of the King County,
Wash., Office of Emergency Management.
Others look at Katrina
Living on the edge
Lots of people have New Orleans
stories to tell (and some people, New
Orleans stories they will never tell)
about what happens when all that heat
and all that passion and all that water
somehow get mixed up with bourbon
and jazz.
They bury the dead above ground
and party in a furious way in New Orleans, perhaps aware that the lovely
city’s position on the map is tenuous.
Nature would cover her with water
and silt and make her disappear in an
instant, if only she could. She would
enter through the back door, pushing
Gulf water into Lake Pontchartrain,
which would overflow its levees.
Nature came close to winning the
struggle Monday.
Hurricane Katrina, with 145 mph
winds driving a 15-foot storm surge,
bounced off the east side of the city and
thrashed the coast from Louisiana to
Mississippi to Alabama and the Florida
Panhandle, leaving flooding and widespread devastation in her wake.
People headed inland by the hundreds of thousands after warnings that
this one could be bad, indeed, could be
the one that changed New Orleans and
the Gulf Coast forever.
Like all big storms, this one diminished in stature over land, unleashing
reservoirs of rain and wind and spinning off tornadoes all over the southeast. Who knows what the toll will be
by the time it’s over?
A prudent President Bush called for
prayer, and he was right. That’s about
all anyone can do early on in a storm of
this size.
Perhaps the people of New Orleans
and all those who live along the rest of
the Gulf Coast can take some solace in
the thoughts of the writer A.J. Liebling,
who once suggested the boldest, the
bravest of people were drawn over decades of migration toward the sea, not to
safe spots inland.
There is reward, but there is also
risk to living on the edge.
— The Chicago Tribune
evacuated.
Armageddon missed by 1 percent,
but devastation was massive along the
coast and a hundred miles inland. The
insurance estimating firm Eqecat Inc.
predicted $25 billion in losses, making
it the most expensive storm in history.
Katrina’s repercussions began even
before the storm hit. Because so many
oil rigs, refineries and petrochemical
plants are located on the Louisiana
coast, traders bid crude oil over $70 a
barrel, a new record.
Louisiana was designed for alligators and crawfish, shorebirds and redfish, not for man.
Man has systematically destroyed
or “developed” the swamps, bogs and
barrier islands that protect the coast,
and rechanneled the Mississippi and
Atchafalaya rivers that used to drain the
interior and replenish the land. He has
built levees to protect him from the river, forgetting that they could one day
form a basin he’d drown in.
He has built houses and condos and
casinos along the coast, and populated
it with a million people.
One day Mother Nature may reclaim it. Monday wasn’t that day, but it
was perilously close.
— The St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Hope for the best
Blessings may be difficult to count
when the 90-degree heat makes your
house feel like an oven. But the pain
that killer Katrina inflicted on New Orleans and surroundings Monday should
put our discomfort into perspective.
South Florida is lucky not to be suffering the aftermath of a Category 4 or
5 hurricane. Now is the time to review
how we handled Katrina and how, individually and collectively, we can improve our performance for the next hit.
Experience in Hurricane Alley teaches
it’s just a matter of when.
That said, it’s no fun to sleep without air conditioning, listening to the
hum of generators with only a cold
shower as relief. Cutting down and
hauling broken tree limbs and other refuse is hard, sweaty work. Businesses
that lost power lost big money. So, too,
East of Armageddon
did employees who lost days of work.
At dawn on Monday, Hurricane KaEven throwing out spoiled food is
trina made a slight right turn as it barpainfully expensive. Many sustained
reled in from the Gulf of Mexico,
flood and wind damage that will take
making landfall over the eastern shore
weeks or months to repair. Others are
of Barataria Bay, the haunt of the pirate mourning the lives lost because of KaJean Lafitte.
trina.
That last-minute turn eastward —
The good news: More than a miljust 1 percent farther east along the
lion south Floridians already have had
1,631-mile U.S. Gulf Coast than was
their power restored. Some never lost it
forecast — may have saved the United this time around. Those “haves” are
States from the worst natural disaster in helping the “have-nots” — offering ice,
its history.
generators, hot meals and cool rooms to
The Big Easy’s peculiar topograrelatives and friends.
phy, both natural and manmade, places
If a category 1 hurricane causes
it in a bowl, at sea level or below.
such large-scale disruption, imagine
Katrina’s last-minute turn, and its
how much worse the damages could be
quick downgrading to a Category 4 and from a bigger-than-Andrew hurricane
then Category 3 storm, saved the city.
following a path like Katrina’s.
Disaster officials had warned of “ArmToday, send good wishes to Katriageddon,” but some people refused to
na’s victims on the Gulf Coast.
join the million coastal residents who
— The Miami Herald
JEFF PARKER/Florida Today
The ‘next Camille’ finally came
By STAN TINER
Knight Ridder
Generations of Mississippi Coast
dwellers have enjoyed their piece of
paradise with a certain joie de vivre
that is a part of our heritage. The
good times have rolled through the
decades with a party that never
quite ends, fueled in more recent
times with the glitz of electric-lit
rows of casinos and a booming economy.
All of this existed in the shadow
of the memory of Camille, the 1969
storm whose deadly visit devastated
much of the coast, but which also
defined the Coast’s gritty spirit.
In all of the years since we have
waited and watched for the “next
Camille.” This was the benchmark
against which all other storms were
measured. Thankfully, none that
came ever measured up.
Those whose homes survived
Camille lived with a sense of confidence that they were somehow safe,
indemnified against the future and
all of those lesser storms that came
and went every year or two.
But in the back of our collective
minds there was a nagging feeling —
a fear, really — that at some time another storm would come that was
the equal of or even worse than
Camille.
On Monday, Aug. 29, our worst
fears were realized.
Katrina came and smashed south
Mississippi with a fury that utterly
devastated the coast, leaving an indelible memory that will never be
forgotten.
The grim statistics will take weeks
to tally, but a Biloxi Sun Herald reporter captured the situation very
well late Monday when he said “it
would be easier for me to list the
places that are undamaged than to
list those that are damaged.”
Stan Tiner is vice president and executive editor of The Sun Herald in Biloxi, Miss., and a former editor of the
Mobile Register. Readers may write to
him at P.O. Box 4567, Biloxi, Miss.
39535-4567, or via e-mail at tinersunherald.com.
Superdome became a civic giant
By DALE McFEATTERS
Scripps Howard
Hurricane Katrina has an unsung
hero — the New Orleans Superdome.
The 27-story-tall stadium was
opened Sunday as a refuge for people too poor or too frail or too unlucky to evacuate.
As of Tuesday, it was sheltering
10,000 people, a number that was
growing as people were rescued
from attics and rooftops and patients were transferred there from
endangered hospitals.
The conditions inside sound terrible — sweltering from no air conditioning, the bathrooms overflowing
with sewage, minimal lighting and
the uncertainty of what happens
next.
And now, with water in the city
rising from a broken levee, the dome
itself is to be evacuated.
But the big structure did its job,
and the discomfort of those who
huddled there was surely a small
tradeoff for being alive.
The Superdome itself didn’t escape unscathed from the storm.
Sheathing was stripped from the
roof and at least two holes torn in
the dome.
But it was a suitably civic-minded
way for the spaceship-like building
to mark its 30th anniversary Sept.
28.
As for the principal tenants of the
Superdome, pro football’s New Orleans Saints, they’re at preseason
training camp — in San Jose, Calif.
Dale McFeatters’ e-mail address is
McFeattersD@SHNS.com.
18A ᑹ
MOBILE REGISTER
HURRICANEKATRINA
KATRINA
GRAND HOTEL
Damage
in millions
at area
landmark
BALDWIN BEACHES
TAKE HEAVY HIT
៑
General manager says
resilient facility will reopen
‘even better and more grand
than before’
៑
Shore of Mobile Bay bears
brunt of historic storm surge
By VIRGINIA BRIDGES
By DAN MURTAUGH
Staff Reporter
Staff Reporter
POINT CLEAR — In its 158-year
history, the Grand Hotel has survived
fires, floods, hurricanes and two
rounds of duty as a military facility.
Maybe that’s why General Manager David Clark was so nonchalant
walking around the grounds Tuesday
eyeing the millions of dollars in damage incurred Monday during Hurricane Katrina.
“The Grand is known for its resilience,” Clark said. “You have to put
this into perspective. There were no
fatalities here. There’s nothing that
time and money can’t fix.”
The grounds of one of the oldest
and most posh resorts in Alabama
were covered by about an inch of
slick mud that looked like melted milk
chocolate.
Water had burst through the windows of the Grand Ballroom, several
dining rooms and first-floor guest
rooms. Inside the rooms, furniture
was pushed against the walls and
floors were covered by water, mud
and broken glass.
The hotel is closed indefinitely.
Off-duty State Troopers hired by the
hotel, Clark said, are guarding the entrance to the hotel and keeping everyone off the property. He said he
expects to announce plans for renovation and reopening within the next
three weeks.
The Grand plans to hold a meeting
for all managers and employees at the
Fairhope Civic Center at noon Thursday to update everyone on the hotel’s
situation. Clark also said employees
could call 1-800-379-1022 for daily updates.
“There will be a happy ending to
this story,” he said. “The hotel will be
even better and more grand than before.”
The Grand was built in 1847, and
includes 405 guest rooms, five restaurants, a 20,000-square-foot spa, two
18-hole golf courses, eight tennis
courts, a 500,000-gallon pool and a
marina, all on its 550-acre property in
Point Clear. The hotel is owned by
PCH Hotels & Resorts, which is
funded by the Retirement Systems of
Alabama.
The hotel was destroyed by fire in
1869, and was damaged by hurricanes
in 1893, 1906, 1916 and 1979. It also
suffered minor damage last September during Hurricane Ivan. It was
closed to the public twice during
wars, as it was used as a military hospital during the Civil War and as an
Air Force training ground during
World War II.
The hotel’s security director,
Lushun Wright, was on the grounds
Monday morning. He said he was
about to leave when he saw that Scenic 98, the road that the Grand sits on,
was flooded. Stuck in the hotel, he
watched the grounds fill with about 4
feet of water in 45 minutes, he said.
The water flooded over the bulkheads and ripped all the planks off the
hotel’s pier, depositing the wood in
front of the Grand Ballroom. The windows facing the bay from the ballroom were all broken, and water had
destroyed parts of the drywall inside
the building. Clark said the damage to
the carpet in the ballroom alone
would cost more than $1 million to replace.
The Grand Dining Room, the Bayview Restaurant and Bucky’s Birdcage
Lounge were also badly damaged. Before the storm, employees had screwed in metal screens over the windows
to protect the dining areas, but the
floodwater burst through the metal
and glass windows alike. Inside the
dining areas, tables and chairs were
smashed against walls. Broken plates
and silverware were scattered across
the still-wet floors.
Julep Point, the small building that
sits next to the bay on the hotel’s
southwest corner, was also damaged,
with holes blown through the walls.
Bricks from the buildings and from
the boardwalk along the bay lay scattered on the grass outside the hotel.
The stained-glass front door outside the hotel’s main lobby was blown
off, and the lobby was still covered by
a thin sheet of water.
Clark said there were a few bits of
good news about the hotel. The Dogwood Golf Course was not severely
damaged and should be open within a
few days, he said. The spa building
and pool did not appear to suffer severe damage, either.
Clark said he was most pleased
that a 6-foot-tall statue of Aura
“Bucky” Miller, who greeted guests at
the hotel for 61 years, was not damaged in the storm. The bronze statue
was installed in May.
Katrina’s
waters
batter
Baldwin
CHIP ENGLISH/ Special to the Register
MARY HATTLER/Staff Photographer
Above, benches
along the boardwalk
in Gulf Shores are
virtually at ground
level with the public
beach Tuesday as a
result of Hurricane
Katrina.
At left, two
employees of the
city of Gulf Shores
ride down a waterfilled street by the
Original Oyster
House in Gulf
Shores. A resident
can be seen in the
background wading
out from a house. A
small boat is
beached at the right.
Hurricane Katrina left many Baldwin
County residents, county leaders and business owners grateful that minimal damage
could be repaired within days and hours, instead of weeks and months.
Bert Noojin is not one of those people.
Noojin lives about a quarter-mile south
of the Fairhope Municipal Pier. He was one
of many homeowners along the county’s
southwestern tip stung when Katrina’s historic storm surge filled first floors of homes
along Mobile Bay and demolished most
piers, some rebuilt since Hurricane Ivan.
In Baldwin County, the shore of Mobile
Bay was hit harder than the Gulf Coast this
time.
Fairhope Mayor Tim Kant said officials
there have estimated the damage to city
property, homes and businesses at $250 million, much more expensive than the damage
done during Hurricane Ivan last September.
Noojin watched starting about dawn
Monday as a somewhat calm bay rose over
his pier and moved toward his home, he
said.
At 8:30 a.m. Monday, Noojin and his wife
left the three-bedroom, three-bath home
where they have lived since 1999 and went
to a cottage on the property closer to Mobile Street.
Within the next two hours the rolling
waves started getting faster, taller and more
frequent, he said.
Soon they were breaking against his
house, shattering three huge double-pane
windows in the bay front room, built to withstand 200 mph winds, he said.
“Then the waves just started to roll
through the house,” he said. “At one point
there were waves breaking at 7 feet tall.” A
low-riding wave carried a red couch out into
the bay, he said.
On Tuesday, the Baldwin County Health
Department ordered residents in areas along
Baldwin County 1 in Fairhope, south of 12th
Avenue in Gulf Shores and west of Kiva
Dunes in Gulf Shores to boil water before
cooking or drinking.
In Daphne, several homes and city parks
along the waterfront suffered severe damage. Public Works Director Ken Eslava said
the city lost all three of its piers, at May Day
Park, Village Point Park Preserve and Bayfront Park.
The Lake Forest Yacht Club also was hit
hard.
Please see Eastern Page 19A ៑
Roofing material hangs down at Gulf Village
on West Beach Boulevard in Gulf Shores on
Tuesday.
Cleanup of Baldwin beaches already under way
៑
Gulf resort cities
scrambling to reopen in
time for holiday weekend
By RYAN DEZEMBER
Staff Reporter
GULF SHORES — The labor has
begun to get ready for the upcoming
weekend, and leaders along Baldwin’s Gulf Coast said the area would
likely be ready for the last major holiday of the summer season.
As Hurricane Katrina floodwater
receded into the Gulf of Mexico on
Tuesday, it left behind a layer of
packed sand on Gulf Shores’ southernmost streets, but little debris and
hardly any of the wreckage that
plagued the beaches after last September’s Hurricane Ivan.
“Structural damage is almost nil,”
Mayor G.W. “Billy” Duke III told city
department heads during an early
morning meeting to organize the
cleanup. “While we’ve got a lot of
work to do, this is not anything compared to Ivan.”
By late morning state highway
crews were plowing sand from Alabama 182 and utility workers were
righting slanted power poles. Building inspectors were dispatched to
search for damaged homes and the
fire marshal was sent to inspect condo tower elevators.
In a tourism-based economy that
A machine is used to sweep up dirt and mud from the parking lot at the
Fairhope Pier on Tuesday morning. In a tourism-based economy that faced
months of down time following Hurricane Ivan, officials in Baldwin County
are pushing to have beaches ready for the approaching Labor Day
weekend. The Fairhope Pier, however, could take longer to repair.
faced months of down time following
Ivan, officials in Orange Beach and
Gulf Shores are pushing to have the
beaches ready for the approaching
holiday weekend.
“Right now the info we’re getting
is we’re going to be open for business, particularly in Orange Beach,
for Labor Day weekend,” Alabama
Gulf Coast Convention and Visitors
Bureau President Herb Malone said.
“We’ll have limited things open in
Gulf Shores and Fort Morgan, but to
what extent we don’t know yet.”
Katrina was much harsher to Gulf
Shores — which is generally lower
than Orange Beach and nearer to the
storm’s center — flooding city
streets about a mile inland as late as
Monday. By late Tuesday morning,
streets in the Windmill Ridge Road
area remained submerged and impassable.
Though there is free movement
across the Alabama 59 bridge over
the Intracoastal Waterway and most
areas have restored power, there is a
roadblock at Alabama 59’s intersection with Fort Morgan Road that prevents access to the beach area and
another at the 6-mile marker on Fort
Morgan Road because of continued
impassability near the tip of the peninsula.
City officials said they weren’t sure
when access to those areas would be
restored but announcements would
be made on television and radio.
Orange Beach City Councilwoman
Tracy Holiday took a morning tour of
some of that resort city’s condo towers and said that most had only
wind-driven sand and water to clean
from their first-floor lobbies and Gulffront pool areas.
“They’re scrambling,” she said of
condo management companies, “but
they’re hoping to get some of their
Please see Baldwin Page 19A ៑
ᑹ 19A
MOBILE REGISTER
HURRICANEKATRINA
KATRINA
MAWSS water safe; some warned to boil
By BILL FINCH
Environment Editor
Residents served by the Mobile
Area Water and Sewer System should
have safe drinking water supplies, but
health department officials warned
that customers of the Mobile County
Water, Sewer and Fire Protection authority, south of Laurendine Road in
Mobile County, and everyone on the
Bayou La Batre and Dauphin Island
water supply systems should boil
their water before drinking.
The Baldwin County Health Department has warned residents to boil
water in the following areas: County
Road 1 in Fairhope; South of 12th Avenue in Gulf Shores; and west of Kiva
Dunes in Gulf Shores.
In addition, said Bert Eichold,
chief of the Mobile County Health Department, anyone getting their water
from a private or household well
should boil it if flood waters rose
higher than the level of the well head.
Water contaminated during the
storm could lead to a number of illnesses, some of them quite serious,
health officials said.
Those with private wells that were
overtopped by flooding should refrain
from drinking until they have the water tested by the Alabama Department
of Environmental Protection or other
reputable labs.
MAWSS, which provides drinking
water to the city of Mobile and most
of the central part of the county, has
been able to maintain water pressures, and drinking water quality has
not been affected, according to director Malcolm Steeves.
However, Steeves noted that the
system was selling about 2 million gallons more per day than it normally
would, an indication that there are a
number of leaks in the system. Because the water pressure remains
BAYOU LA BATRE
Man details rescue of family
Eastern Shore
takes heavy hit
៑ Continued
Photos by G.M. ANDREWS/Staff Photographer
Several boats are aground in the trees lining Bayou La Batre on Tuesday. The waters of Bayou La Batre were on the rise even
before hurricane-force winds began to blow through the marshes that fringe the town’s wharf area.
‘I knew that if the water kept going up, we were going to lose our lives’
By RENA HAVNER
and BEN RAINES
Staff Reporter
As Ihai Lu watched the water inside
his Bayou La Batre home rise about 5
feet during Hurricane Katrina on Monday, he prayed.
And he grabbed chairs. Then a table.
He eventually stacked a table on top of
another so that his family members —
his elderly parents, his wife, his brother,
sister-in-law and their 1-year-old son —
could keep their heads above water.
The family soon was running out of
room to breathe. Meanwhile, the roof of
the red brick home on Wintzell Avenue
was starting to blow away.
Lu said he had grabbed a hammer
and was ready to smash a window so
that the family could escape if the water
rose any higher.
“I knew that if the water kept going
up, we were going to lose our lives,” he
said. “The men could swim, but we were
worried about the women and the boy.
They can’t swim.”
The waters of Bayou La Batre were
on the rise even before hurricane-force
winds began to blow through the
marshes that fringe the town’s wharf
area.
It’s clear that the surge made it at
least as high as the second story of
buildings and homes along the bayou.
Those rising waters knocked buildings to
pieces, destroyed massive industrial seafood processing equipment and stranded dozens upon dozens of 100-foot-long
shrimp boats deep in the woods.
Many of the landlocked boats still
had their crews onboard. In most cases,
they had been riding the storm out in
the relative safety of their steel-sided
cabins and were helpless once the ships
slipped their moorings. Small footpaths
worn through the marsh grass were visible where stranded mariners had met
people delivering supplies on Tuesday.
Those beached vessels, especially
the many upside-down boats, appear to
be causing a significant environmental
problem in the bayou as thousands of
gallons of diesel fuel pour into the area’s
marshes.
Fumes from the diesel were strong
enough to cause burning in the eyes
Tuesday afternoon and rendered the entire length of the bayou’s surface a shimmery mess.
It’s unclear what cleanup will be possible as the fuel empties directly into the
Mississippi Sound almost as soon as it
leaks from the broken vessels. It’s possible that many other chemicals spilled
into the bayou, as many of the shipbuilding and docking facilities appeared to be
totally destroyed.
But the rising water, which Lu said
seemed to come up so quickly in just a
few hours Monday morning, miraculously stopped in time for many. Once the
water stopped, the Lu family waited to
be rescued by a boat.
Lu, 26, said they had tried several
times to call for help. The phone service
was spotty, he said. They did reach an
high, these leaks would not allow outside water to intrude into the system.
But Steeves said the leaks could
cause other problems if they continue, and he encouraged customers to
call the water service if they see any
indication of leaks. The number to
call is 694-3100. Press “5” to report a
leak.
Steeves said he believed that
many of the leaks could have been
caused when uprooted trees broke or
punctured lines.
from Page 18A
Floodwaters from Hurricane
Katrina caused some damage
on Plash Island and in Bon Secour — both located on opposite sides of the Bon Secour
River just northwest of Gulf
Shores — but most folks took it
in stride.
Compared to the devastation
wrought by Hurricane Ivan less
than a year ago, they said, this
latest storm was nothing.
Trees and downed power
lines were reported all across
unincorporated areas of the
county after the storm, however, damage was minimal
compared to Fairhope, officials
said.
Commissioner Frank Burt
said his northern district fared
well, with damage reports consisting of downed trees and
power lines.
“We were pretty much
spared this time,” Burt said. On
Monday night and early Tuesday morning county highway
workers started clearing and
repairing roads, officials said.
County Engineer Cal Markert
said that Baldwin County 1,
south of Point Clear, had the
most significant damage he has
seen. Many trees are also down
along U.S. Scenic 98 and reports indicate that Ponce De
Leon Avenue on Fort Morgan
was washed out. Markert said
he expected that all main county roads would be passable, except for Ponce De Leon, by
Tuesday night.
The county may start picking
up some of the larger debris in
Fairhope and Point Clear today
or Thursday. Other debris
pickup will be set at a later
date, which will give residents
time to clean it up and move it
to the curb, Markert said.
Baldwin County Schools Superintendent Faron Hollinger
said facilities received no major structural damage and
classes would resume Thursday.
As of 4 p.m. Tuesday, Baldwin County officials were still
assessing the need for setting
up distribution centers, and
hadn’t decided whether they
would be opened or where,
said Colette Boehm, spokeswoman for the county’s Emergency Management Agency.
Gulf Shores continued its
curfew from 8 a.m. Tuesday until 6 a.m. today. Fairhope officials said there will be a
sunset-to-sunrise curfew for
nonresidents of portions of
Point Clear along Mobile Bay.
The limited curfew will cover
Scenic 98 between Nelson Road
and Baldwin County 1 and from
Baldwin County 1 to Scenic
Highway 98 to Pelican Point.
All other cities ended their
curfews.
All Baldwin County offices,
including the courthouse and
court system, were expected to
reopen today, officials said.
The five evacuation shelters
opened by Baldwin County in
public schools were closed
Tuesday morning and less than
100 people were relocated to
American Red Cross shelters.
Those shelters include St.
Paul’s Episcopal Church in Foley, the First Baptist Church in
Robertsdale and the First Baptist Church in Bay Minette.
Mary Jane Johnson, Red
Cross disaster response coordinator for Baldwin, said that
the shelters will be open as
long as people need them. A
significant number of evacuees
are from Louisiana and Mississippi, Johnson said.
(Staff Reporters Dan Murtaugh, Brendan Kirby, Marc Anderson and David Ferrara
contributed to this report.)
Baldwin beach
cleanup under way
៑ Continued
A shrimp boat, right, is grounded onshore near another boat in Bayou La Batre.
Police Chief John Joyner said Katrina was far worse for Bayou La Batre than 1969’s
Hurricane Camille and 1979’s Hurricane Frederic. He estimated that 80 percent of
the homes there were uninhabitable, mostly due to water damage.
operator who told them that emergency
workers would be there as soon as they
could.
Officials with the Bayou La Batre Police Department said they rescued up to
40 people Monday as the city of less
than 3,000 flooded. Emergency personnel and witnesses said the water was 6
to 10 feet high in some spots.
Anticipating a high storm surge, city
officials issued an evacuation order Sunday. Police officers knocked on doors
and told people to leave, said Police
Chief John Joyner. Most left, but some
remained.
Jason Strachan, a volunteer police reservist, said he was able to launch his
18-foot flat boat in the parking lot of the
Greer’s Food Tiger grocery store on the
Irvington-Bayou La Batre Highway
throughout the day Monday. With state
Rep. Spencer Collier, R-Irvington, who is
also a state trooper, and John Thomas
Jenkins, a state conservation officer,
Strachan rescued stranded residents by
boat.
Other officers drove a military truck
through the water to get others who had
not heeded evacuation orders issued
Sunday. Even the mayor, Stan Wright,
had his own pickup truck out picking up
rescuees from Strachan’s boat and taking them to shelters set up at two local
churches.
“They were hanging onto trees, on
their roofs, in their attics,” Wright said.
“One couple was using (an inflatable
child’s) pool as a boat. We got one lady
who was five months pregnant and had
five other babies. We even rescued one
guy who was a double amputee, floating
around on a mattress.”
Meanwhile, volunteer firefighters
worked with the Alabama Army National
Guard to launch at least five separate
rescue missions, said Fire Chief Gary
Johnson. Riding around town in a Humvee, Johnson said, water was still up to
his waist.
“People wanted to stay in their
homes. I think they were really surprised
about the surge,” Johnson said. “This
was the worst flood I’ve ever seen down
here and I’ve been here all my life and
I’m 44.”
Joyner said Katrina was far worse for
Bayou La Batre than 1969’s Hurricane
Camille and 1979’s Hurricane Frederic.
He estimated that 80 percent of the
homes there were uninhabitable, mostly
due to water damage.
A cruise up the bayou suggested that
some shrimping families may be devastated, having lost multiple vessels, while
others escaped unharmed. Tuesday
afternoon, one shrimper hailed the marine police to his vessel to ask if he
could leave port and get back to work.
He was told that state waters are
closed for the time being. Police officials
did not know when the waterways would
be reopened. After Hurricane Ivan, state
officials closed the bay to all vessels for
about a week.
Bill Pasquarelli, who lives aboard his
28-foot 1967 Columbia, rode out the
storm in the bayou, his small sailboat
tied to the hull of a shrimper.
“The waves were 7 feet in the bayou,
on top of the surge. I was pretty nervous,
especially when the waves came rolling
over the stern,” Pasquarelli said. “Ripped my hatch off. Had to tie it back on
with rope. I just kept bailing all day long
to keep afloat because the boat kept filling up.”
Pasquarelli said he had to tie down
Elvis, his small dog, because he washed
over once.
“Mainly I was worried about getting
hit. All those shrimp boats started coming loose. They’d be tied together, four
at a time. I watched the water come up
and they just floated right over the pilings along the dock. And those pilings
were pretty high before the water came
up. You bet I’d do it again. This boat is
everything I have.”
from Page 18A
main buildings open.”
Most of Orange Beach had
power restored by midday
Tuesday and officials expect
most of the beach to be energized by this morning. All parts
of that city are open to residents.
Though homes along the
beach survived the storm’s
surge, construction trailers, in
many cases, did not. Some, like
the sales trailer at Amber Isle,
were overturned, while the
construction trailer at Opus, a
high-rise being built, looked as
if a bomb went off inside of it.
Near the Gulf Shores Public
Beach a small group of people
who rode out the storm sat beneath the Gulfview Condos
barbecuing. Paul McAually and
Mickey Hill told of watching
30-foot waves crash near the
Pink Pony Pub, a beach highway covered in 6 to 8 feet of
water and high-rise construction cranes spinning “like
weather vanes.”
The awning of Top Shelf, a
restaurant above the condos,
was torn in the 75 mph winds
and was “flapping so loud it
was like thunder,” Hill said.
Gulf Shores City Councilman
Joe Garris Jr. said that he was
able to drive almost to the tip
of Fort Morgan Road and said
“no houses that I saw were
knocked off their foundations
or their pilings or anything like
that.
“Some of the new construction areas took a beating,” Garris said. “But it’s not as bad as
it could have been.”
Officials have credited a
14-mile, $26 million beach
renourishment project that is
nearly complete with saving
beach houses from Katrina’s
surge. The manmade beach
will need to be fixed — the Federal Emergency Management
Agency will pay for repairs —
as large sections of sand were
washed away, but officials
credited the berm with saving
the cities.
“Just speculating, I’d say we
lost 35 (percent) to 40 percent,” said Orange Beach
Coastal Resource Manager
Phillip West. “We had a Category 3 surge and the project successfully protected those
upland structures and infrastructure.”
The Grand Hotel in Point Clear sustained window damage
Monday when Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast.
20A ᑹ
MOBILE REGISTER
HURRICANEKATRINA
KATRINA
‘I’ve never seen destruction of this magnitude.
You see this stuff on TV and you hope it never happens to you.
Everything’s gone.’
Paul Merritt
Resident, Biloxi, Miss.
BILL STARLING/Staff Photographer
A car lies upside down among what remains of the Bombay Bicycle Club on U.S. 90 in Biloxi on Tuesday. The Beau Rivage Casino is seen in the background.
G.M. ANDREWS/Staff Photographer
Above, shrimp boats sit on their sides Tuesday after they were pushed up out of Bayou La Batre
by high waves and storm surge from Hurricane Katrina. Below, boats are strewn about a yard in
Ocean Springs, Miss.
A sailboat is beached near the USS Alabama on Tuesday after being pushed ashore
during Hurricane Katrina. The battleship is leaning slightly to the port side.
ᑹ 21A
MOBILE REGISTER
HURRICANEKATRINA
KATRINA
A damaged section of the Causeway east of the Tensaw River Bridge is shown Tuesday in Spanish Fort.
BILL STARLING/Staff Photographer
Oak Park Elementary School kindergarten teacher Maya Carlisle looks over the damage done by Hurricane Katrina to the classroom of her co-worker, Kim Everett, in Ocean Springs on
Tuesday.
Left, Houses were completely destroyed along the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Above, pillars are all that remain of
many houses along the west end of Dauphin Island on Tuesday.
22A ᑹ
MOBILE REGISTER
HURRICANEKATRINA
KATRINA
‘At first light, the devastation
is greater than our worst fears.
It’s just totally overwhelming.’
Kathleen Blanco
Governor of Louisiana
BILL HABER/Associated Press
New Orleans residents ride in a boat and walk through floodwaters that besieged the
Crescent City on Tuesday.
SMILEY N. POOL/AP, Dallas Morning News
Floodwaters fill the streets of downtown New Orleans on Tuesday.
DAVID J. PHILLIP/Associated Press
Above, A U.S. Coast Guard helicopter rescues a family from a roof in downtown New Orleans on
Tuesday. At right, destruction is shown along Interstate 10 heading into New Orleans.
DAVID J. PHILLIP/Associated Press
MOBILE REGISTER
THE ALLSTATE
CATASTROPHE
TEAM IS
HERE TO HELP
To report a storm-related claim, call:
1-800-54-STORM
If your insured property or auto was damaged by the recent hurricane, the Allstate Catastrophe team
is here and ready to help with your claim. Call 1-800-54-STORM, contact your Allstate Agent or file your
claim online at allstate.com. In your time of need, you deserve personal help and attention.
Allstate Insurance Company, Allstate Indemnity Company, and Allstate Property and
Casualty Insurance Company: Northbrook, IL. ©2005 Allstate Insurance Company
ᑹ 23A
24A ᑹ
MOBILE REGISTER
HURRICANEKATRINA
KATRINA
Katrina sends oil prices soaring
៑
Gas prices could
reach up to $3 a gallon
in hurricane’s wake
By BRAD FOSS
AP Business Writer
The potential damage to oil
platforms, refineries and pipelines that remain closed along
the Gulf Coast drove energy
prices to new highs Tuesday,
with crude futures briefly topping $70 a barrel and wholesale
gasoline costs surging to levels
that could lead to $3 a gallon at
the pump in some markets.
Companies scrambled planes
and helicopters to get an aerial
view of their assets and they
began escorting some previously evacuated workers back to
offshore facilities to conduct
detailed inspections of rigs and
underwater pipes. Some producers found that a rig or platform had disappeared or
drifted, while others reported
that damage appeared minimal.
Onshore, wind and flooding
from Hurricane Katrina is expected to have caused enough
damage to pipelines, storage
tanks and refineries that it
could take weeks, and in some
cases months, before operations return to normal, analysts
said.
“It’s ugly,” said Lawrence J.
Goldstein, president of the New
York-based nonprofit Petroleum Industry Research Foundation. “Power is a problem,
but the water issue is unbelievable.”
To avert a severe supply
crunch, Goldstein said the government should relax summer
gasoline specifications to immediately free-up motor fuel supplies otherwise being held in
storage until Sept. 15. He said
the U.S. should also seek help
from European nations, who
might be willing to lend, exchange or sell gasoline and other fuels out of their own
inventories.
PETER COSGROVE/Associated Press
An oil platform ripped from its mooring in the Gulf of Mexico rests
by the shore in Dauphin Island on Tuesday. The potential
damage to oil platforms, refineries and pipelines that remain
closed along the Gulf Coast drove energy prices to new highs
Tuesday, with crude futures briefly topping $70 a barrel.
The production and distribution of oil and gas remained severely disrupted by the
shutdown of a key oil import
terminal off the coast of Louisiana and by the Gulf region’s
widespread loss of electricity,
which is needed to power pipelines and refineries.
The trading frenzy on futures
markets reflected the uncertainty and fear about the full extent
of the damage Katrina inflicted,
as well as the constraints being
felt where actual shipments of
gasoline, heating oil and jet fuel
are bought and sold.
“This is an extremely serious
situation,” said Tom Kloza, director of the Wall, N.J.-based Oil
Price Information Service.
Light sweet crude for October delivery rose $2.70 to settle
at $69.90 a barrel on the New
York Mercantile Exchange.
Prices had reached as high as
$70.85, a new high on Nymex,
although still below the inflation-adjusted high of about $90
a barrel that was set in 1980.
September gasoline futures
rose 41.44 cents to $2.4750 a
gallon on Nymex, where trading
was halted briefly after the exchange’s 25-cent trading limit
was reached. Heating oil futures
climbed by 16.71 cents to
$2.0759 a gallon.
In wholesale markets on the
Gulf Coast, some gasoline was
being priced as high as $2.85 a
gallon and in the Midwest,
prices were as high as $2.65 a
gallon, according to Kloza. Retail prices are typically 60 cents
higher, meaning motorists in
these regions could very well $3
a gallon at the pump in some
markets.
Natural gas futures raced
higher as well. Natural gas for
October delivery traded at
$11.659 per 1,000 cubic feet, an
increase of 52 cents.
In a sign of the havoc Katrina
caused, Houston-based Diamond Offshore Drilling Inc. reported one missing rig and
another that broke free from its
moorings, but which was found
about nine miles north of its
original location.
Houston-based Newfield Exploration Co. said one of its
production platforms has disappeared. It had produced about
1,500 barrels a day. Newfield Exploration Co. expects to replace
the platform within six to seven
months.
A spokesman for the Natural
Gas Supply Association said it
was too soon to determine the
entirety of the damage inflicted
on the industry. Analysts believe the operations of natural
gas processors and chemical
manufacturers, who depend
heavily on natural gas as a feedstock, could be disrupted for
weeks.
The runup in natural gas and
heating oil futures is expected
to result in sharply higher
home-heating bills this winter.
In addition to refineries and
oil platforms, critical infrastructure that remained out of service included:
The Louisiana Offshore Oil
Port, the largest oil import terminal in the United States.
The Colonial Pipeline,
which transports refined products such as gasoline, heating
oil and jet fuel from Houston to
markets as far away as the
Northeast.
The Plantation Pipe Line,
which transports fuel from refineries in Mississippi and Louisiana to consuming markets as
far away as northern Virginia.
The Capline pipeline system, which transports crude oil
from the Gulf to the Midwest.
Many energy companies
struggled just to visit their facilities.
Such is the case for Chevron
Corp., which shut down its
325,000 barrel a day Pascagoula, Miss., refinery before Katrina’s arrival. “We are hoping to
get in there today, but that’s
the issue — getting there,” said
company spokesman Michael
Barrett.
BP PLC spokesman Scott
Dean said the company managed to conduct aerial overflights of several deepwater oil
and gas platforms and that the
damage appeared to be minimal. The company also brought
a few workers back to their offshore rigs to get a closer look.
“I still can’t speculate on when
we’ll resume production,” he
said.
At least eight Gulf Coast refineries in the path of Hurricane
Katrina have shut down or reduced operations, taking out
anywhere from 8 percent to 10
percent of the nation’s production capacity, according to
company and federal reports.
Organization of Petroleum
Exporting Countries secretary
general Adnan Shihab-Eldin reiterated Tuesday that the group
will supply extra barrels of
crude oil to refiners if they want
them. Previous OPEC pledges
have done little to ease market
fears over supply.
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Official: Katrina worse than Ivan

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