Official: Katrina worse than Ivan
Transcription
Official: Katrina worse than Ivan
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 WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 31, 2005 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 Associated Press Writer 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: Cash 3: 8-6-5 Play 4: 1-3-6-6 Mega Money: Not available Fantasy 5: Not available 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 8,701 85,759 Amt. Ea. $0 $837.50 $9.50 Quick Pick Georgia Tuesday Cash 3 Midday: Cash 3 Evening: Cash 4 Midday: Cash 4 Evening: Mega Millions: Fantasy 5: 0-3-0 1-0-5 8-5-2-4 Not available Not available Not available Louisiana Tuesday Pick 3: Pick 4: Cash Quest: Not available Not available Not available 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 WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 31, 2005 MOBILE REGISTER 3 4!4%&!2ISHERETOHELP YOUWITHYOURCLAIM 3TATE&ARM®ISAWARETHATTHERECENTHURRICANEHASCAUSEDEXTENSIVE PROPERTYDAMAGE )F YOU ARE A 3TATE &ARM POLICYHOLDER AND YOUR HOME OR CAR HAS BEENDAMAGEDBYTHEHURRICANEPLEASE s #ONTACTYOUR3TATE&ARMAGENTOR s #ALL3&#,!)-TOREACHOUR CATASTROPHEOPERATORSOR s 6ISITSTATEFARMCOM®TOINITIATEACLAIMONLINE (ELPING PEOPLE RECOVER FROM THE UNEXPECTED IS WHAT BEING AGOODNEIGHBORISALLABOUT 0ROVIDING)NSURANCEAND&INANCIAL3ERVICES STATEFARMCOM® 3TATE&ARM)NSURANCE#OMPANIESs(OME/FFICES"LOOMINGTON)LLINOIS ᑹ 3A 4A ᑹ 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 WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 31, 2005 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.) WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 31, 2005 MOBILE REGISTER ᑹ 5A ATTENTI ON: CABLETVCUSTOMERS If your cable TV service has been interrupted by Hurricane Katrina, you may be eligible to receive FREE Installation of a 4- Room Digital Satellite TV System from DISH Network. The monthly rate of our basic package starts at only $31.99 per month and our service can usually be installed within 24 hours. Call today and we will give you over 200 channels FREE for the first month and we will also give you 25 premium movie channels FREE for the first 3 months. ForMoreI nf ormat i onort o pl aceyourorder ,pl easecal l : ( 800)8461565 Call Today, Watch TV Tomorrow. 2 of 25 movie channels require HD monitor and receiver. Free programming requires participation in Digital Home Advantage offer. After free period, customer must call to downgrade to other qualifying programming or then-current price for selected programming package will apply. Digital Home Advantage: Pay $49.99 Activation Fee; receive $49.99 credit on first bill with 18-month qualifying programming purchase. Requires Social Security Number, valid major credit card and credit approval. If qualifying service is terminated prior to end of 18-month period, a cancellation fee equal to the lesser of $240 or $13.33 per cancelled month of service will apply. Equipment must be returned to DISH Network upon termination of qualifying service. Limit 4 tuners per account. Monthly package price includes $5.00 equipment rental fee for first receiver. $5.00/mo. equipment rental fee applies for each additional receiver. A $4.99/mo. additional outlet programming access fee applies for each dual-tuner receiver; fee will be waived monthly for each such receiver continuously connected to Customer’s phone line.Monthly $4.98 DISH Network DVR Service fee applies for each DISH Player-DVR. Next Day Installation Offer available in most geographic areas; eligibility based on service address. Offer ends 1/31/06 and is available in the continental United States for new, first-time DISH Network residential customers. All prices, packages and programming subject to change without notice. Local and state sales taxes may apply. Where applicable, equipment rental fees and programming are taxed separately. All DISH Network programming, and any other services that are provided, are subject to the terms and conditions of the promotional agreement and Residential Customer Agreement, available at www.dishnetwork.com or upon request. Local Channels packages by satellite are only available to customers who reside in the specified local Designated Market Area (DMA). Local channels may require an additional dish antenna or a SuperDISH antenna from DISH Network, installed free of any charges with subscription to local channels at time of initial installation. Social Security Numbers are used to obtain credit scores and will not be released to third parties except for verification and collection purposes only or if required by governmental authorities. All service marks and trademarks belong to their respective owners. Smart Home Electronics Terms and Conditions: Offer requires minimum purchase for at least twelve (12) consecutive months of America’s Top 60 programming package at $31.99 per month. Cancellation penalty will apply if service is terminated prior to 12 months. Description of free standard professional installation is available upon request. 6A ᑹ MOBILE REGISTER WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 31, 2005 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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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 WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 31, 2005 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 Associated Press Writer 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. Associated Press Writer 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.” Are You Ready For The Next Storm? FABRIC SHIELD STORM PANEL EASY UP. EASY DOWN. EASY TO STORE. AFFORDABLE. 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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 Associated Press Writer 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 WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 31, 2005 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 Associated Press Writer 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. Associated Press Writer ᑹ 11A MOBILE REGISTER WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 31, 2005 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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Save Money with an Electric Heat Pump INDOOR AIR QUALITY SPECIALIST ALSO AVAILABLE:•DUCT CLEANING & SANITIZING •AIR PURIFICATION 649-5902 *Restrictions may apply ROGELIO SOLIS/Associated Press Nothing left but pile of rubble at deadly apartment in Biloxi By HOLBROOK MOHR Associated Press Writer 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 WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 31, 2005 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. AT ALFA YOUR CLAIM IS OUR PRIORITY. ▲ Alfa has always been there when our customers needed us most. Our adjusters will be working Due to the damage caused by Hurricane Katrina, the Mobile Register cannot guarantee home delivery. If we are able to reach your home, we will deliver your paper. If we cannot reach your home, we will deliver all issues you have missed when conditions improve. in your area and support personnel are on alert to provide additional help and information. If your home, car or property suffered storm damage please call Alfa's toll-free number at 1-800-964-2532 or contact your Alfa agent as soon as possible. If you have notified us please know that we are doing our best to take care of your claims as quickly as possible. For claims processing information call toll free: In the meantime, newspapers will still be available at all our distribution racks and retail outlets. We regret the inconvenience this causes and will resume home delivery as soon as we can. 1-800-964-2532 or visit Alfa's web site at www.alfains.com We appreciate your patience and we value your business. ▲ Thank you for your patience. ® AUTO • HOME • LIFE 2108 EAST SOUTH BOULEVARD MONTGOMERY, ALABAMA 36116 Since 1813. A better newspaper every day. ᑹ 13A MOBILE REGISTER WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 31, 2005 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 Associated Press Writer 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. 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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. 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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 WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 31, 2005 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 WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 31, 2005 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 How to write us We value readers’ letters. Please send them to: Letters to the Editor P.O. Box 2488 Mobile, AL 36652-2488 Fax: 251-219-5794 E-mail: [email protected] Please keep letters short. Sign them, and include your address and telephone number. You may enclose a photo. All submissions become the property of this newspaper and will not be returned. Submissions may be edited and may be published or otherwise reused in any medium. 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 WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 31, 2005 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 [email protected]. 18A ᑹ MOBILE REGISTER WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 31, 2005 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 ៑ MARY HATTLER/Staff Photographer 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 MARY HATTLER/Staff Photographer 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 WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 31, 2005 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.” JOHN DAVID MERCER/Staff Photographer The Grand Hotel in Point Clear sustained window damage Monday when Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast. 20A ᑹ MOBILE REGISTER WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 31, 2005 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. JOHN DAVID MERCER/Staff Photographer MIKE KITTRELL/Staff Photographer 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 WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 31, 2005 HURRICANEKATRINA KATRINA MIKE KITTRELL/Staff Photographer 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. JOHN DAVID MERCER/Staff Photographer 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. JOHN DAVID MERCER/Staff Photographer 22A ᑹ MOBILE REGISTER WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 31, 2005 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 WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 31, 2005 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 WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 31, 2005 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. QUALITY VINYL SIDING CO. MOBILE’S ONLINE AUCTION. COMING SOON REG2BID MOBILE’S ONLINE AUCTION Vinyl Siding Sale! Top Line Material & Workmanship at a Fair Price! 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