Survivors search for missing loved ones
Saturday, September 3, 2005; Posted: 7:01 p.m. EDT (23:01 GMT)

OCEAN SPRINGS, Mississippi (AP) -- The only word 1-year-old Leah knew was "Da-da." She lay in a stranger's arms as her mother, Christi Scott, floated away in a hot tub.

"I thought, there's no way I'm going to find her," said Scott, who drifted in her makeshift lifeboat atop Hurricane Katrina's floodwaters for 20 minutes before reaching land. "She doesn't know her name. She can't say my name."

The Scott family was one of thousands in anguished limbo after Katrina scattered loved ones across 150 miles of destruction.

Power, telephones and cell phones remained cut off along much of the Gulf Coast. Too many were missing for authorities to launch individual searches. Online lists of survivors were confusing, incomplete and inaccessible for those without power.

So Scott, like many others, resorted to old-fashioned searching: by foot, car and word-of-mouth.

The search brought some to Reimann Funeral Home in Gulfport, Mississippi, where dozens of bodies were being stored in refrigerated trucks once used to ship Dole bananas. Jason Green, the funeral home's director, said 30 people came to him Thursday asking if family and friends were among the dead.

He offered sympathy, but no answers.

"You try to be compassionate as you can," Green said. "Some, I just hug their necks and cry with them and then take them next door to the church for counseling."

Officials say many recovered corpses have been too decomposed or damaged to identify. Richard Rose, city manager of D'Iberville, Mississippi, said it could be two weeks before officials begin publicly releasing names.

Henry O'Neal left Slidell, Louisiana, with a three-car caravan of 10 children and eight adults. Many of the children's parents -- O'Neal's brothers and sisters -- were still missing.

"We look at the television. We call everybody and anybody. We ask everybody. We've talked to the Red Cross here, but they don't have anything on them right now," said O'Neal, 32. "We've run out of ideas. It's nothing but dead ends."

D'Iberville Deputy Fire Chief Danny Miller said his department has received dozens of missing persons reports in the town of 8,500 people. Though firefighters will check at a missing person's address and talk to neighbors, there's no time for much else.

"We go out and do our best," Miller said, "but we have to move on to our next missing person."

The Red Cross has been collecting missing person reports through a nationwide hot line -- 1-866-GETINFO -- though most survivors are unable to phone in, and some who can get a busy signal from jammed lines, said Marvine Hamner, a Red Cross volunteer in Pascagoula, Mississippi.

"They were getting thousands of calls an hour at that number," Hamner said at the Jackson County Emergency Operations Center, where the Red Cross has a single phone for incoming calls.

Scores of evacuees, plus family and friends of those who stayed, have flocked to the Internet to plead for information on sites such as hurricanekatrinasurvivors.com and the Biloxi and New Orleans newspaper Web sites. But few along the stricken Gulf Coast have access to computers, so for many the desperate search continued.

Scott, 23, was one of the lucky ones.

After two days of scouring the battered Mississippi coast in a storm-damaged pickup, Scott spotted Leah on Wednesday along a crowded street in D'Iberville. Her daughter was being carried to a police officer by a woman she'd never seen. The woman told Scott she was the last in a chain of caretakers.

"She said the family before her thought she had gone through four families already and they were just trying to get her to a Red Cross shelter," Scott said as her sleeping baby, wearing only a diaper, sucked a purple pacifier in her mother's arms. "[Leah] gave me a look like, `I'm OK,' and then she went straight to sleep on me."

Scott said their random reunion should give survivors hope:

"Don't giveup."

Copyright 2005 The Associated Press.

Focus shifts to recovering the dead
Teams go house to house in New Orleans in search for corpses
Monday, September 5, 2005; Posted: 10:25 a.m. EDT (14:25 GMT)

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (CNN) -- One week after Hurricane Katrina roared ashore, recovery teams were going house to house in New Orleans to search for victims, while rescuers hunted for stranded survivors.

Three teams of 31 people each are in the disaster area, said Todd Ellis, incident commander of this mortuary effort in Louisiana.

Bodies will be taken to refrigerated trucks at collection sites and then transported to a portable morgue in St. Gabriel, south of Baton Rouge, where officials will try to identify the remains using DNA technology, dental X-rays, fingerprints and photographs.

Officials so far have collected 59 bodies from the Crescent City, including 10 from the Louisiana Superdome, where thousands of people sought refuge when levees around the sunken city broke and water flooded the streets on August 29. Officials expect the death toll to climb into the thousands.

"I can't tell you what the numbers are going to be, but I think we need to prepare the country for what's coming," Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told Fox News on Sunday. "... It is going to be about as ugly a scene as I think you can imagine."

The U.S. Coast Guard is continuing around-the-clock missions to rescue residents trapped in their homes and elsewhere.

President Bush on Monday will go to Baton Rouge -- the headquarters of relief efforts in Louisiana -- and also will visit Poplarville, Mississippi, an inland area that also was devastated by Katrina.

The president toured Biloxi, Mississippi, and New Orleans last week.

In Mississippi, the death toll stands at 161, according to the state's emergency management agency, but that toll also is expected to rise.

Texas seeks help with evacuees

Texas Gov. Rick Perry said his state's emergency resources were stretched thin and urged other states to take in some of the evacuees.

"As Texas provides food, shelter and medicine to more than 230,000 evacuees, we are concerned about our capacity to meet this great human need as thousands more arrive by the day," Perry said in a statement on his Web site Sunday.

"Many states have generously offered to help provide relief, and with Texas nearing its shelter capacity, we have begun contacting those states to take them up on their kind offer to provide additional support."

On Sunday evening, a plane carrying evacuees landed at the Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, the first group to go to Arizona.

Former Presidents George H.W. Bush and Clinton announced the creation of a fund to help Katrina's victims Monday during a visit to evacuees in Houston.

The Bush Clinton Katrina fund will give the money to the governors of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, who will decide how to spend it.

The White House asked the two former heads of state to lead a national funding effort to help victims of the hurricane, a mission similar to the one they undertook following the Indian Ocean tsunami in December.

Amid horror, 2 officers commit suicide
'World can't understand'

By Keith O'Brien, Globe Correspondent | September 5, 2005

NEW ORLEANS -- Sergeant Paul Accardo was the public face of the New Orleans Police Department, a spokesman who went in front of the TV camera on a regular basis, but Katrina and its harrowing aftermath were apparently too much for him.

Accardo and another New Orleans police officer have committed suicide, the 1,500-person department announced yesterday, a startling sign of the emotional toll the storm has taken on those trained to face almost any challenge.

Police Superintendent Eddie Compass announced the two suicides yesterday morning, telling WWL Radio in New Orleans that ''the world really can't understand" what has happened in New Orleans in recent days, and that the two suicides were tragic parts of an already horrible situation.

''We had no food, no water, no ammunition, no vehicles, no gas," Compass said. ''We had to scrounge equipment to fight this battle."

Lawrence Celestine was the first officer to take his own life since the storm, police officers said. News of his death came Friday. Accardo's came next, sometime early Saturday morning, when he shot himself in the head in a parking lot in St. Charles Parish, two parishes west of this still flooded city.

Accardo, one of the department's media spokespersons, had endured a devastating week just like many people. But Lieutenant Julie Wilson said the flooding and the violence that followed left Accardo, 36, without any mooring.

''He lost everything he owned," said Wilson, a 25-year veteran. ''He just could not find a way to wrap his mind around what had happened. There was despair in his eyes and sorrow. All I can say is it is more than he could handle."

Accardo, an affable man who had a gentle manner about him, even on murder scenes, was a department veteran who worked as a patrolman in Lakeview and the French Quarter. He jumped at the chance to move to the public affairs office about four years ago and was generally respected by both reporters and police officers.

''He was a good kid," said Captain Tim Bayard. ''Stayed to himself. Did his job. Did a real good job."

Wilson said Accardo and his wife had separated a few months back, and Accardo was in a ''fragile" state. In the middle of last week, when a police officer was shot, he was unable to take notes on the scene -- something that was routine for Accardo, Wilson said.

''He was trying to write, and he couldn't write. He couldn't speak normally, you know? And I made him sit down in the car," Wilson said. ''Paul just didn't have it. I could see it."

Chief Warren Riley, the assistant superintendent and chief of operations, noticed it too. He last saw Accardo at City Hall at 12:30 a.m. Saturday. There had been another shooting, Riley said, and he told Accardo about it. But Accardo hardly responded, Riley said, and shortly thereafter he took a car and drove west. Captain Michael Pfeiffer said the department wanted to give Accardo a chance to get out of town and decompress. But he did not get far.

''He just stopped," Pfeiffer said. ''It caught up with him."

St. Charles Parish deputies informed New Orleans police of the suicide Saturday, Pfeiffer said. It was yet another tragedy among tragedies, and an indication of the emotional scars left on the city. ''People are tired, depressed," said Lieutenant Cris Mandry, of the city's SWAT team. ''There is total despair, and there is no light at the end of the tunnel. You've got people who believe their lives are over."

But police officers -- a stoic bunch under normal circumstances -- are doing what they can to support one another. They are crying, and hugging. And trying to find small pieces of good in a city that has changed so much so fast. Mandry, for example, took a moment yesterday to pray at the corner of Magazine Street and Jackson Avenue in the lower Garden District.

On a typical weekend afternoon, it is a bustling block of art galleries, antique stores, and vintage clothing stores. But yesterday it was empty, and there, on the corner, was a rudimentary crypt holding a dead woman's body.

Police said the woman had been lying there dead, for days. But Saturday, a man in the neighborhood decided to bury her. He built the crypt using stones from a nearby garden, erected a white cross out of scattered wood, and left a message for those who would come later.

''Here lies Vera," says the epitaph in black spray paint. ''God help us."

© Copyright 2005 Globe Newspaper Company.

Katrina's Mental Toll To Be Huge

Forbes.com Matthew Herper, 09.06.05, 9:13 AM ET

NEW YORK - Victims who are rescued from the horrors of the flood-ravaged city of New Orleans may have frequent and intense psychological problems similar to those that plague troops returning from Iraq, Afghanistan or Vietnam--issues that could spread to the rescuers as well. Up to a third of the victims of the Gulf Coast catastrophe might be affected.

"This may be the most severe natural disaster that we've faced in this country," says Carol North, a psychiatrist at Washington University School of Medicine. "You can probably expect that mental health consequences are going to be substantial."

So far, many public estimates have said that perhaps a tenth of the tens of thousands of people who are trapped in the city might suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, a disease that ups the risk of suicide six-fold.

But experts warn that even for that disease, which is only one way in which a natural disaster can damage the mind, the rates could be far higher, based on other cases in which patients had to face a terrifying calamity. Other diseases, such as serious depression, are also likely to increase substantially, creating a major public health problem.

Some 34% of the survivors who were trapped inside the Murrah building in Oklahoma City when it was blown up came down with post-traumatic stress disorder, a disease in which patients can suffer from flashbacks, heightened anxiety and social withdrawal, according to surveys done by North.

Even rescue workers can be affected. A group called Disaster Psychiatry Outreach in New York studied firefighters and others who came to the city's aid on September 11, 2001. They found that 20% of these workers developed post-traumatic stress disorder. Rescue workers would traditionally have been expected to be at lower risk for the illness than victims themselves.

The people who are most at risk are those who already suffer from mental illness.

"People who already are affected with anxiety, depression or certain types of phobias are especially prone to PTSD," says Henry Nasrallah of the University of Cincinnati. That problem could be intensified, North says, as people are separated from necessary medicines such as antipsychotics or antidepressants. The flood waters can force patients to leave their pills behind, or make them contaminated and unusable.

To make matters worse, poor and sick patients are more likely to suffer from mental illnesses. Exactly those who are most likely to be harmed are those who are left behind. "It's people who have no resources who will be in the medical term 'screwed,'" says Michael Vanrooyen, of the Harvard School of Public Health.

Another population that can be at serious risk: kids. "If we're looking at the long term, the concern will be how this event will shape children's view of the world around them and of their future," says Robin Gurwitch, a psychologist at Oklahoma University. For them, the key is making sure they get basic needs such as food and water and some kind of return to a routine.

But doctors emphasize that all of the illnesses are treatable if they can reach those who are most affected. Rebecca Smith, a psychiatrist at Disaster Psychiatry Outreach, says, "The main reason to focus on psychiatric disaster is we can fix it."

For some patients, psychotherapy can be a big help. Smith says that cognitive behavioral tricks can almost eliminate symptoms such as panic attacks. But for others, drugs are necessary.

It appears that patients who withdraw are those most in danger of having severe post-traumatic stress disorder. They can be the hardest to treat and the most likely to require medicine. Right now, Paxil and Zoloft are both approved for PTSD. Other similar drugs, such as Prozac, also work. Smith says that there have been some preliminary results with antipsychotics, such as Zyprexa, Risperdal and Seroquel.

She has had particular luck with Seroquel in low doses, which has often been used for its sedating effects.

About 70% of those treated for post-traumatic stress disorder can be helped, Smith says, but even drugs can't help some patients. In clinical trials, Cincinnati's Nasrallah notes, Vietnam veterans did not respond to Zoloft and Paxil. "Many people recover completely,"she says, "but some are plagued for the rest of their lives."

Disaster Mental Health Primer: Key Principles, Issues and Questions

NOTE : These materials represent highlights of the kinds of mental-health related information that might be beneficial in a disaster. Because of their brevity, they do not provide an exhaustive, formal review or compilation of the wealth of available knowledge on disaster mental health. This is a starting point. There are companion pieces that provide similar information for city, county and state Public Health officials and as a general primer. Sources of additional information are listed at the end of this document.


The Impact Pyramid (The victim count only represents the tip of the iceberg.)

Individual victims

Family and social networks

Rescue workers, medical care providers, their families and social networks

Vulnerable populations and impacted businesses

Ordinary people and their communities

Guiding Principles (It is helpful to keep these points in mind when preparing for or responding to a disaster.)

  • No one who experiences a disaster is untouched by it.
  • Most people pull together and function during and after a disaster, but their effectiveness is diminished.
  • Mental health concerns exist in most aspects of preparedness, response and recovery.
  • Disaster stress and grief reactions are “normal responses to an abnormal situation.”
  • Survivors respond to active, genuine interest and concern.
  • Disaster mental health assistance is often more practical than psychological in nature (offering a phone, distributing coffee, listening, encouraging, reassuring, comforting).
  • Disaster relief assistance may be confusing to disaster survivors. They may experience frustration, anger, and feelings of helplessness related to Federal, State, and non-profit agencies’ disaster assistance programs. They may reject disaster assistance of all types.

 Phases of a Disaster (General Principles. No precise, universal timeline exists. Responses vary by disaster. These phases first were observed/described in natural disasters.)

  • Warning of Threat: Ranges from no advance notice (suicide bomber) to weeks (hurricane)
  • Impact: Actual onset of disaster Varies. BT has fuzzy beginning/end; bombing is precise
  • Rescue or Heroic: People watch out for, protect, even risk own safety to save strangers
  • Remedy or Honeymoon: People initially pitch in and collaborate for the collective good
  • Inventory: External resources begin to come online— people watch what goes where
  • Disillusionment: Resource allocation often seen as too little too late, poorly distributed
  • Reconstruction and Recovery: People move beyond self interests and start to rebuild

Factors That Determine the Stressfulness of a Disaster (Individual responses are a function of the interplay of multiple factors.)

  • Features of the Disaster
    Familiarity with the event
    Avoidability of the event
    Suddenness of its onset
    Intensity of its impact
    Course and duration of the event
    Degree to which it can be controlled
  • Community or Societal Factors
     Previous level of community resources
    Community’s level of preparedness
    Extent and nature of damage done
    Community’s experience with such an event
    Consequent social/political unrest
    Availability of resources to rebuild
  • Characteristics of the Individuals Involved
     Actual losses (and threat of loss)
    Previous experience with similar events
    Level of background stress in one’s life
    Physical or psychological closeness to event
    Effectiveness of one’s coping mechanisms
    Nature and extent of available social support

Severity of Psychological Reaction After a Traumatic Event (Most people affected by a traumatic event “recover” without external intervention.)

Potential Risk Groups (Certain individuals/groups are more vulnerable than others.)

  • Age groups (Infants, children and seniors)
  • Cultural and Ethnic Groups (immigrants, non-English speakers, undocumented aliens etc.)
  • Low-visibility groups (homeless, mobility-impaired, unemployed, mentally-challenged etc.)
  • People with Serious and Persistent Mental Illness
  • People in Group Facilities (hospitals, nursing homes, prisons)
  • Human Service, Healthcare and Disaster Relief Workers

Survivor’s Needs & Reactions (While people respond differently, there are common needs.)

  • A concern for basic survival
  • Grief over loss of loved ones and loss of valued/meaningful possessions
  • Fear and anxiety about personal safety and physical safety of loved ones
  • Sleep disturbances, often including nightmares and imagery from the disaster
  • Concerns about relocation and the related isolation or crowded living conditions
  • A need to talk, often repeatedly, about events and feelings associated with the disaster
  • A need to feel one is a part of the community and its recovery efforts

Reactions that Signal Possible Need for Mental Health Referral (Many responses to trauma are expected, but some require extra attention and concern.)

  • Disorientation (dazed, memory loss, unable to give date/time or recall recent events…)
  • Depression (pervasive feeling of hopelessness & despair, withdrawal from others…)
  • Anxiety (constantly on edge, restless, obsessive fear of another disaster…)
  • Mental Illness (hearing voices, seeing visions, delusional thinking…)
  • Inability to care for self (not eating, bathing, changing clothing or handling daily life)
  • Suicidal or homicidal thoughts or plans
  • Problematic use of alcohol or drugs
  • Domestic violence, child abuse or elder abuse

Stress Basics (A quick review to help keep stress in perspective.)Stress is:

  • Normal
  • Necessary
  • Productive and destructive
  • Acute and delayed
  • Cumulative
  • Identifiable
  • Preventable (Much stress is); Manageable (Most stress is)
Some of the Sources of Information Used in this Overview

Academic & Specialty Centers for Public Health Preparedness

American Psychiatric Association

National Center for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

The National Child Traumatic Stress Network

Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration

Source of this report: CDC

Missing Persons Rescue Database
There is a database being developed for people who are missing and may need to be rescued from New Orleans.
Call 225-925-6626 to give officials their names. They may also have information about people already rescued.

      

          

Music Written and Performed By: Lynn Cooper © 1997

Graphics Created By: Brenda Reeves © 2005