Search for missing hurricane victims zeros in on 5 'hot spots'

[KevinFromTexas]

From the Austin American-Statesman
http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/10/03/1003ikemissing.html

HURRICANE IKE

Search for missing hurricane victims zeros in on 5 'hot spots'
Mounds of debris could conceal some of missing on Bolivar Peninsula.

Friday, October 03, 2008
Associated Press

GALVESTON — Search teams looking for as many as 50 people missing since Hurricane Ike hit nearly three weeks ago have identified five "hot spots" where they plan to focus their efforts, officials said.

Mounds of debris scattered across Bolivar Peninsula likely conceal the remains of those still missing, authorities said. Long-awaited reinforcements from state search-and-rescue units were to begin arriving late this week with trained dog teams to search for bodies.

"The sooner we can get closure the better," Crystal Beach Volunteer Fire Chief David Loop said in a story Thursday in the Houston Chronicle. "My main concern is to make sure we do everything possible and make every effort we can to have a good, clean recovery."

The search for bodies is also expected to move offshore to uninhabited Goat Island, on the bay side of Crystal Beach, where one storm victim's body was already found and where large piles of debris have collected.

The Houston Chronicle reported Sunday that 400 people remained missing, mostly from Galveston County. That figure came from an analysis of calls logged to a hot line set up by the nonprofit Laura Recovery Center to assist local authorities.

About 60 of the missing lived on the Bolivar Peninsula, and more than 200 were listed as missing on Galveston Island, according to a city-by-city analysis of the data conducted for the Houston Chronicle by Bob Walcutt, executive director of the recovery center.

Hot line and rescue workers said they hope many people, especially on Galveston Island, will be reunited with family and friends as hurricane recovery efforts continue. More than 145 people had already been located through blogs, media Web sites, Red Cross shelter lists, phone calls, welfare checks conducted by authorities and sometimes dramatic rescues led by the Galveston County sheriff's office and other agencies.

The search echoes the chaos following Hurricane Katrina in 2005, when bodies were turning up more than a year after the storm as ruined homes were dismantled and families returned after months away. Katrina killed more than 1,600 people.

In that storm, there was no way to track people who left the city. The situation worsened when more than 100,000 New Orleans residents who took refuge in Houston had to scatter again a few weeks later as Hurricane Rita approached.

After that storm, authorities opened a center in Baton Rouge, La., to take reports of people who were missing. And just as Ike survivors are doing now, volunteers there turned into amateur detectives — digging through Web sites that sprouted for missing families and calling nursing homes and hospitals.

The center for the missing closed nearly a year after Katrina, when authorities said they had finally exhausted leads.

The official Texas death toll from Ike stood at 33 on Thursday, bringing the total deaths nationwide from Hurricane Ike to 68. The 600-mile-wide storm caused flooding as far north as Illinois.

[KevinFromTexas]

It sounds to me like both.

From the Austin American-Statesman
http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/10/05/1005ike.html

Islanders who insisted on staying died in Ike
Officials say some victims may never be found

By Monica Rhor
ASSOCIATED PRESS

Sunday, October 05, 2008

GALVESTON — The final hours brought the awful realization to victims of Hurricane Ike that they had waited too long, that this storm wasn't like the others that left nothing worse than a harrowing tale to tell.

George Helmond, a hardy Galveston salt, watched the water rise and told a buddy: I was born on this island, and I'll die on this island.

Gail Ettenger, a free spirit who adopted the Bolivar Peninsula as her home 15 years ago, told a friend in a last phone call: I really messed up this time.

Within hours, the old salt and the free spirit were gone as the Category 2 hurricane wracked the Texas Gulf Coast on Sept. 13, flattening houses, obliterating entire towns and claiming at least 35 lives.

The dead — as young as 4, as old as 79 — included lifelong Galvestonians firmly rooted on the island and transplants drawn by the quiet of coastal living. Matriarchs and fathers. Working people and retirees.

Seven people drowned in a storm surge that moved in earlier and with more ferocity than expected. Nine others died in the grimy, sweaty aftermath, when lack of power and medicine exacted its toll. Eleven people were poisoned by carbon monoxide or killed in fires from the generators they used attempting to survive.

On Saturday, a search-and-rescue team discovered two more bodies in debris fields on Goat Island — off the devastated resort area of Bolivar Peninsula — bringing Ike's Texas death toll to 35 and the national total to 70. The bodies were taken to the Galveston County medical examiner's office, and Galveston County sheriff's office Maj. Ray Tuttoilmondo said he had no other information about the victims.

And the list of dead could still grow: Hundreds of people are still missing three weeks after Ike's assault on Texas. Last week, cadaver dogs pinpointed five spots on Crystal Beach where bodies could be trapped under rubble.

Some vanished during the evacuation of towns in the storm's path. Many were last heard in desperate, last-ditch calls for help.

"We are definitely looking and are going to do anything we can to find them, but there may not be any answers to be given," Galveston County emergency management spokesman Colin Rizzo said. "There are definitely going to be people from Hurricane Ike that are never found."

Family safe, man lost on return

It took searchers more than two weeks to find the body of Greg Walker, who was stranded in surging water as he was driving back to his home in Port Neches during the storm. The 40-year-old father of three was returning from Louisiana, where he had taken his family.

About 2:30 a.m., Walker told a 911 dispatcher that he was going to try to swim to safety. He tried calling his wife, but the line went dead.

Orange County officials used search teams, helicopters and cadaver dogs but could not find Walker. Fifteen days after Walker's last call, volunteers from Texas EquuSearch discovered his body a mile from where his truck was found.

House becomes a testament

Even as Ike bore down on Texas, Jim Devine refused to leave his cream-colored house within sight of the bay in San Leon. Devine had moved to the fishing town after retiring and loved the tranquil way of living there, neighbors said.

The 76-year-old Devine drowned when Ike sent water barreling through his house, picking him off the second-story porch and dropping him a block away. Days later, Devine's empty home still bore the scars of the storm — shattered windows, twisted wood, and his boat, the Seabar, jammed under the front steps.

His daughter left a warning and a memorial in orange spray paint: "Jim Devine. No Trespassing."

An island salt's last Gulf storm

At 72, George Helmond had ridden out many storms and thought he could take on Ike, too, neighbor Don Hanson said. "A lot of old Galvestonians are like that."

Helmond had been one of the first residents of Sydnor Lane, which overlooks a bayou on one side and a golf course on the other. A retired electrician, Helmond was a die-hard fisherman, a dove hunter and straight-shooter intensely proud of his Galveston roots.

"He had no problem telling you what he thought," said Jim Williams, whose family has lived on the street for more than 30 years. "He was an old-school Texan, a good ol' boy."

But the morning before Ike slammed ashore, Helmond began to have second thoughts about staying.

Around 10 a.m., Helmond called Hanson, who had already left, to say the water had already slipped over the road and toward his house. The street — the only way out of the neighborhood — was already impassable.

At 9:30 p.m., Helmond and Hanson, 66, talked for the last time. By then, the water had pummeled through Helmond's garage, crushing the doors and submerging his Cadillac. Hanson begged Helmond to grab a life vest at his house or to seek shelter there.

But at 2:30 a.m., for some reason, he drove off in his pickup, at the height of Ike's fury.

Neighbors found Helmond's body the next day inside the truck, which had slammed into a golf course fence. The windshield was shattered.

Helmond's home suffered little damage. The water had reached above the first-floor garage, but not inside the house.

"If he had stayed home and hadn't gone out, he'd be OK, but he panicked," Hanson said.

Fatal mistake, realized too late

Gail Ettenger stumbled upon her house in Gilchrist by accident. But once she saw the site on the bay side of Bolivar Peninsula, she knew she would never leave.

Ettenger, a native of New Jersey, distilled the house with her own energy and style. The 58-year-old's garden bloomed with vibrant birds-of-paradise.

And Reba, an 11-year-old Great Dane hobbled by arthritis, was her baby, recalled JoAnne Burks, Ettenger's neighbor and close friend.

"She took care of all God's creatures," Burks said. "She was just a good, caring person."

But Ettenger, a chemist at Exxon Mobil, didn't evacuate, reasoning that her house had weathered Hurricane Rita in 2005 without a problem. She also did not want to leave Reba, who could no longer climb into Ettenger's Jeep.

Burks and her husband pleaded with Ettenger to change her mind. But she insisted.

Hours before Ike made landfall, Ettenger knew she had made the wrong choice. She called the Burkses and described the water pushing up under her feet and the propane tanks and other household items drifting by her windows.

Her voice was shaky with fear, Burks said.

They suggested Ettenger break into a newly built house that was higher and sturdier than her own. Ettenger refused, saying she could not force her way into a neighbor's house.

That was the last time they spoke.

Burks spent the next 10 days searching for her friend, calling local, state and federal officials, even private investigators, without success.

"I didn't want her to wind up like the victims of Katrina, who were never found or identified," Burks said.

Ettenger's body was found Sept. 23, tossed on a debris field in a Chambers County marsh about 10 miles from her house.

Burks said both her house and Ettenger's are gone. The house that the Burks had urged Ettenger to break into was still standing.

And amid the muck and remnants of homes, Burks found a pink leather collar. The name Reba was spelled out in rhinestones.

Scale, risk of recovery daunting

The estimate of missing residents varies wildly from one agency to another.

According to the nonprofit Laura Recovery Center, about 300 people are missing. Of those, about 200 from Galveston. However, the number "goes up and down by the minute" as people call in to remove or add names, Executive Director Bob Walcutt said.

About 50 people are still missing from the unincorporated areas of Galveston County, which include Bolivar Peninsula, Rizzo said.

Galveston city officials don't know how many island residents are missing, city spokeswoman Alicia Cahill said.

Immediately after the hurricane, Galveston officials conducted door-to-door searches for survivors and possible victims. But the city is no longer taking an active role in the search, Cahill said. "We have so much to do with responding to damages and infrastructure, we haven't moved into the later stage of looking for people," she said.

In Galveston and Chambers counties, search teams have been using airboats and all-terrain vehicles to sift through massive debris fields, tangled and fetid marshlands, and the rubble left behind by Ike.

The task is enormous, and the terrain is perilous, said Hector Gonzalez, a game warden with Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, as he steered an airboat through a maze of cuts and sloughs in Chambers County.

Bodies could have been tossed anywhere in the marshes, where thickets of trees are tangled with seagrass and littered with the contents of houses. Refrigerators, office chairs and television sets are scattered everywhere — in the mud, in bushes, on treetops.

The marshes are thick with snakes, alligators and swarms of mosquitoes. In some places, Gonzalez said, searchers could step into waist-high mud or into an alligator nest.

For most of the past three weeks, search crews were limited to sheriff's deputies, volunteer firefighters and the 16 game wardens in a five-county area, despite requests for more assistance from local officials.

Last week, reinforcements from the state and special K-9 search and recovery units arrived, said Crystal Beach Volunteer Fire Chief David Loop, who has been leading recovery efforts.

Loop, whose own house was reduced to a concrete slab by Ike, helped recover bodies after Katrina. But this mission is more personal. Some of those still missing were his neighbors and friends, people he knew by nickname and greeted with a wave and a "How ya doin'?"

"We should make every effort we can to find someone. You should know in your mind that you did everything possible to find that person or recover that person," Loop said. "Unfortunately, there may be people we might not be able to find, but we want to be able to show the public that did we everything possible to give them closure."