September 27, 2008

The Underreported Aftermath of Ike

As we happily reported here, Ubu Roi survived hurricane Ike unscathed.
However, many did not.  Over at Houblog he points out that literally hundreds are still missing.

The most disturbing bit is this piece by a commenter,
 

This is third hand but I am told of a coast guard member that is saying that they are pulling bodies out of the bay on a daily basis and is suprised that it is not being reported in the media. I am also being told that many people on the Bolivar peninsula were overtaken by events. That Thursday evening many people got home form work and started packing up to leave Friday morning, but TXDOT stopped the ferry early Friday morning and that within an hour or so of the ferry stopping, the road through High Island flooded from the storm surge in seargent leaving them no way off the peninsula. I too am questioning the official body count.


Ubu says that that report about the citizens of Gilchrist and the rest of the barrier islands is supported by other reports. If true there could be HUNDREDS dead. Reportedly very few bodies have been found. Now, there are the usual conspiracy stories about corpses being stacked and a conspiracy by the media to cover it up of course it is more likely, that they are buried in debris, the marshes, the sound or were washed into the gulf. There were very few survivors from the Bolivar peninsula, some idea why can be seen here.


(Before and after pics via Jeff Masters)
Few places have noted the utter destruction of the towns on the Bolivar peninsula particularly Gilchrist. I imagine the reason is why there was so little appreciation of the parts of the Gulf Coast that were utterly destroyed by Katrina and Rita (as opposed to New Orleans, which missed the brunt of both) the reporters weren't where the surge was highest (which is why they still live) and the people who make up the media either don't care or are so hateful that they get a chuckle* out of Hurricanes that hit the areas of the southeast that they do not fit their narrow, provincial, definition of "hip".

The aftermath of IKE is remarkable, particularly for a cat 2 storm, but as was noted elswhere, the surge of this thing was unusually high due to the storms massive size. Only a very few storms in the past 150 years have done the kind of total annihilation of a populated area that this one has. The areas that were not subject to the full brunt of the surge like Huston and Galveston were very badly damaged by winds.

Regards Charities, I have recently heard good things about Portlight and the charities listed in this post have all had first hand vouchers.

(*That bastard Wolcott deleted his bigoted screed when  Hurricane Katrina sideswiped a place he could relate to.)

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 09:54 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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1 Of course, we all know why the national media haven't been paying any attention to this. It's because they can't figure out how to use it to make the Republicans look bad.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Sun Sep 28 01:37:37 2008 (+rSRq)

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