Authorities admit they may never know if Ike victims were washed out to sea..

[Virginia Dare]

:wow:

GALVESTON, Texas — About 250 people who withstood Hurricane Ike on a coastal sliver of land will be forced off it so crews can begin the recovery effort, authorities said Tuesday, vowing to invoke emergency powers to make it happen.

County Judge Jim Yarbrough, the top elected official in Galveston County, said those who defied warnings that they would be killed if they rode out the storm on the Bolivar Peninsula are a "hardy bunch" and there are some "old timers who aren't going to want to leave."

The Texas attorney general's office is trying to figure out how legally to force the holdouts to leave, Yarbrough said. Local authorities are prepared to do whatever it takes to get residents to a safer place.

The peninsula is too damaged for residents to stay, and with no gas, no power and no running water, there is also concern about spread of disease, officials said.

-snip

Authorities may never know if people who tried to weather the storm were washed out to sea. So far, there are no confirmed fatalities, but Yarbrough and other officials said he didn't think that would hold.

"I'm not Pollyana. I think we will find some," he said.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/16/fema-struggles-to-provide_n_126825.html

[ailsagirl]

1. Terrible. Let's gut FEMA and restaff it... geeez what a bunch of idiots

[SoCalDem]

2. People don't just "vanish"

Why not start a website for people looking for people..the ones who never show up, and who lived in the affected places, could certainly be "accounted for"...

Of course, this would be a great opportunity for someone who survived, but who WANTED to vanish...and start over somewhere else.. (not likely, but a few tried it after 911)..

Perhaps FEMNA prefers to have it a one-to-one "lost somebody" even, instead of a trackable inventory of lost people...

[EFerrari]

4. The Red Cross has one but as readmoreoften pointed out to me,

it has limitations.

[meow mix]

3. or.. "were hoping to never have to tell the truth about this"

a hint to the press; dont bother asking

[Mojorabbit]

5. This does not make sense

Surely it could be cross checked with the IRS in the months to come. If the govt wants to find you they always do.

[EFerrari]

6. If there were a lot of missing people, wouldn't we see their families

trying to find them? Remember after 9/11 -- all those poor people putting up flyers and going on talk shows? I'd think you could only put off people like that for a short while before they revolted and found a way to be heard.

[Mojorabbit]

7. I think things

may be too confused for that yet. When it starts to settle down perhaps. to say they may never know is misleading I think when if they wanted to find out in the coming months they could.

[EFerrari]

8. There's a search for bodies on today in Galveston.

It was announced this morning ("we're going to be searching the debris piles") and nothing was said about that status at their 4pm briefing.

That's a mistake, imho. People need information. When you don't give it to them, of course they're going to imagine the worst. :(

[onethatcares]

9. not to be morbid but

the bodies will start to float on the tide if they got washed out. It's been what, 5 -6 days now? Those bodies are gonna be ghastly.

[Hell Hath No Fury]

10. And those that remained along the coast...

I thought I read a story about alligators eating the surviving livestock. :scared: I remember stories about the flight that went down in Florida and how some of the bodies were never going to be recovered because of the alligators. ;(

[onethatcares]

11. sad but true.n/t

m t