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I have been surprised these numbers were released and so readily spread by bloggers all over the USA!
Is this a Rovian trick?
Any number less than 8,000 American deaths can be skewed as satisfactory rescue mission, it wasn’t so bad after all.
ABC News – Sep 05 11:30 AM
New Orleans Parish Residents Return Home; Mayor Says Hurricane Katrina Death Toll May Hit 10,000
[ABC News link not active – took a Reuters link instead – Oui]
More to follow below the fold »»
MY CONCLUSION :: ALL HEADLINES IRRESPONSIBLE for suggestion up to 25,000 dead!
These statements add to FEAR, please corroborate stories first before publication. A rovian tactic?
WASHINGTON (AP) Sept. 2, 2005 — The U.S government is sending four mobile morgues to the area struck by Hurricane Katrina. One unit is working in Louisiana and the other three are en route or in staging areas, the Federal Emergency Management Agency said Friday.
The death toll in the storm remains uncertain but officials have said it could be hundreds or thousands.
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Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Teams — known as DMORT — are made up of civilian volunteers who provide victim identification and mortuary services. The teams set up temporary morgue facilities and handle body preparation and disposal of remains.
Organized under FEMA, the teams work under direction of local authorities during an emergency.
They include funeral directors, medical examiners, coroners, pathologists, forensic anthropologists, medical records technicians and transcribers, finger print specialists, forensic dental experts, dental assistants, x-ray technicians, mental health specialists, computer professionals, administrative support staff and security and investigative personnel.
[Links and bold emphasis added are mine – Oui]
Police, Soldiers Go Door to Door Urging New Orleans Residents to Leave Dangerously Polluted City
NEW ORLEANS Sept. 8, 2005 — Marty Bahamonde, a FEMA spokesman, said the agency has hired a contractor to help remove bodies in the expectation that there may be large numbers of corpses.
“Nobody has any numbers or anything they’re going by other than guesswork,” Bahamonde said.
The enormity of the disaster came ever-clearer in neighboring St. Bernard Parish, which was hit by a levee break that brought a wall of water up to 20 feet high. State Rep. Nita Hutter said 30 people died at a flooded nursing home in Chalmette when the staff left the elderly residents behind in their beds. And Rep. Charlie Melancon said more than 100 people died at a dockside warehouse while they waited for rescuers to ferry them to safety.
[…]
25,000 Extra Body Bags are Flown In
Meanwhile, the firm of Kenyon Worldwide Disaster Management has been hired by FEMA to coordinate the recovery of bodies in Orleans, Jefferson, St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes.
Images of the dead Stern.de
Life's End Marked "X"
IT’S LORD OF THE FLIES IN LOUISIANA
R.I.P. May all these brave Americans meet their creator and rest in peace.
Their deaths demand accountability and Justice!
by Bruce Nolan, Staff writer (Nola.com)
Eleven days after Hurricane Katrina plunged New Orleans into agonies of flood, panic and chaotic evacuation, authorities finally began searching house-to-house in once-flooded neighborhoods Friday for those who did not escape.
Early results retrieved far fewer bodies than officials expected.
That led one key official to hope the death toll might be much less than 10,000, Mayor Ray Nagin’s early estimate that quickly became an unchallenged benchmark.
That figure was based on the speed with which Hurricane Katrina flooded the Lower 9th Ward and other poor, densely populated neighborhoods as the storm roared past on Aug. 29 with winds of at least 105 mph.
The estimate became more credible as thousands of traumatized refugees slogged into the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center during the next two days, bearing nightmarish tales of pushing bloated bodies out of the way or passing them sprawled on rooftops.
But in the first day of organized searching, there seemed some reason for hope. “I think there’s some encouragement in what we found in the initial sweeps, that some of the catastrophic death that some people predicted may not, in fact, have occurred, The numbers so far are relatively minor, as compared to the dire predictions of 10,000,” said Terry Ebbert, chief of homeland security for the city.
At least in the Lower 9th Ward, federal, state and local teams along with officers from all over the country broke open doors and entered homes, calling out for survivors and looking for corpses.
Where they found neither, they scrawled “0-0” on the house and moved on.
Excellent historic site –
must read ::
Lower Ninth Ward Neighborhood Snapshot
Downtown New Orleans is shown in this aerial view today.
AP Photo/David J. Phillip
NEW ORLEANS (AP) Sept. 10, 2005 — A woman waters her mint plants outside her house. A man rides his bicycle on a levee. A newspaper truck lumbers down the road, the passenger handing out papers. In this battered, flooded city, a few signs of normalcy have flickered defiantly in recent days.
IEM, FEMA and Hurricane Pam Exercises
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Originally posted ◊ at Suspect Device Blog
You may have seen mention of the “Hurricane Pam” exercise in press coverage of Louisiana’s emergency preparedness, or lack thereof. I used to work for IEM and was at the Hurricane Pam exercise.
As with most IEM projects, the Hurricane Pam exercise was put together at the last minute, in a blind animal panic with no time for refinement, testing, or subtlety, but it still was a remarkable and bold idea.
There were contracts in place with major vendors across the country, and prestaging areas were already determined. […] this is one reason FEMA has rejected large donation and turned back freelance shipments of water, medical supplies, food, etc: they have contracts in place to purchase those items, and accepting the same product from another source could be construed as breach of contract. This could lead to contract cancellation, thus removing a reliable source of product from the pool of available resources. … but the reasoning is that if they accept five semis of water from the east Weewau, Wisconsin, Chamber of Commerce, the water supplier, who is contractually bound to provide 100,000 gallons per day will be freed from that obligation.
So: Louisiana did have a hurricane plan (pdf file), but was devising a new one, to be based on recommendation from the people who would actually be doing the work. The need to evacuate people from impact areas, including those without transportation or the means to obtain it, was discussed, despite media assertions to the contrary.
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FEMA Region VI related contract firms ::
Established in 1956, Dewberry is a multidisciplinary planning, engineering, and design firm, employing more than 1,600 individuals. As FEMA’s largest contractor
URS Corporation provides planning, engineering, architecture and applied science to hundreds of government agencies and private industrial and commercial companies worldwide. The company has more than 26,000 employees.
Local news links ::
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I have found these the best source for local NOLA news ::
Nola.com with people finder & news archives.
Also Louisiana TV news and video reports ::
2 the advocate – Baton Rouge
KSLA TV – Shreveport
KTAL News – Katrina Pet Rescues Continue
WAFB TV – Baton Rouge
WVUA7 TV – Tuscaloosa
6WDSU News – New Orleans
4WWL TV.com – New Orleans
2WSB TV – Atlanta
Does anyone have other or better suggestions?
– SPECIAL REPORT from THE TIMES-PICAYUNE –
It’s only a matter of time before South Louisiana
takes a direct hit from a major hurricane.
Billions have been spent to protect us,
but we grow more vulnerable every day.
Five-Part Series published June 23-27, 2002
- PREVIOUS DIARIES RELATED TO KATRINA ::
- BUSH Think :: Creationist “Order out of Chaos” Links To Skull & Bones Society!
- Volunteers At Heart :: RESCUE MISSION KATRINA
- Chandeleur Islands Gone ¶ “Hazard Waste Areas :: Everyone Needs to Get Out! “
- Breaking – NG | DHS Orders :: Red Cross Not Allowed In NOLA
- Disasters George Bush Wrought :: Analysis and Katrina Update
Update [2005-9-10 15:27:46 by Oui]:
The Dutch government organization, Rijkswaterstaat¹, announced a shipment of pumps. project manager and specialists via Antonov, worlds largest air freighter at the request of US Army Corps of Engineers in Louisiana.
From the news report, the Dutch are shipping three self-supporting pumping stations (containers) and some 200 meter pipes. The units operate on diesel fuel and have a large pumping capacity. Rijkswaterstaat did mention the pumping station filters out oils and foreign substances, which are separated as the units operate.
Rijkswaterstaat has a long-standing partnership pdf with the Army Corps of Engineers, however the request apparently was delayed two weeks. The sacking (recall) of FEMA leader Mike Brown may be somehow connected?
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IN SEARCH FOR AUDIO and VIDEO SOURCES!
After first faint reports, I saw video on CNNi of the rescue operations at Charity hospitals. At gunpoint – patients on manual ventilation were left to die (confirmed in 5 cases) as staff was flown out.
Today I heard witness account on BBC World of the same instance on the emergency platform as the doctors and nurses were left caring for patients on life support. HORRIBLE – CRIMINAL.
“By Wednesday the hospital was drastically low on supplies and dangerously unsanitary,” Shard said. “Two people paid a private ambulance service to take their family members out of the hospital.
“They didn’t want to sit there and watch them die.”
Outside the hospital they heard gunshots. Shard said he saw fistfights and men firing at each other in the blocks below. CNN reported sniper fire outside of Charity Hospital. Shard’s bosses told him people were shooting at emergency helicopters.
Luckily, Charity has its own armed security force. And the doors were locked. But everyone would have to leave at some point. “It got to the point where it was turning into ‘Day of the Dead’ in there,” Shard said. “People were walking around like zombies. Nurses and their assistants were quitting their jobs every day. They couldn’t take the conditions.”
By Thursday, Charity was “no longer a hospital,” according to Shard. The patients had to move. Men with fishing boats and guns – men Shard didn’t know – helped ferry patients and staff one city block to Tulane’s hospital.
When they got to Tulane, which had limited electricity, Shard said he immediately resumed helping his patients with breathing problems.
Helicopters hovered above.
“The Medevac flights were being delayed to get family members out ahead of the critical patients,” Shard said. “People were dying. They were taking out people who weren’t sick. I don’t know why. To this day, I don’t know why.”
On Friday, Shard and nine patients were flown by Chinook helicopter to Louis Armstrong International Airport. Once there he continued to help his patients with breathing problems.
Eventually he felt lightheaded. The adrenaline began to fade. He was relieved of his duties. He reached Rachel by phone. She was OK. She had holed up with some police and firefighters in nearby Algiers.
That night Shard stayed with a friend who lived outside of town. He could barely sleep. Patients’ faces haunted him in dreams.
NorthJersey.com – Sep 08 6:24 AM
When Charity Hospital’s backup generators ran low on fuel, the medical staff siphoned gas from unused ambulances to keep them operating. And when the heat got unbearable in the New Orleans hospital, nurses knocked out windows and converted boxes into makeshift showers.
[link doesn’t open for me – Oui]
Dr. McSwain Jr – At Hospital, Isolation and Chaos
LSU – patients and staff evacuated
Medical staff recounted scenes of desperation and violence: battles with panicked survivors, gunshots fired at helicopters ferrying out babies, animals running wild and garbage rotting in the sweltering heat.
CNNi – Katrina Disaster
CBS News – Katrina Disaster Blog
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I beleive there is an intentional delay in processing contractors into the NO area. The outlying areas are acessable, but not New Orleans.
There is a gauntlet of paperwork and screening going on that I have never seen in this type of disaster. I personaly have been going through this gauntlet for almost a week now,
There is more underlying factors preventing the recovery than is being told to the public.
It is truly criminal.
IP my friend… when are you going to diary your experiences?
So glad to see you around today!
as soon as I get there, if I can, that is, I will arrange some feed out of there.
this is the strangest situation I have ever seen. I am only one of a few along the gulf coast that is certified to do this, and it is being kept at bay….significant cover is obvious.
Were these numbers floated to intentionally make it seem as if they got more people out than they really did? Who in the media are staying to film the clean up of remains? You know that there must be some type of independent accounting of the bodies or they will sweep the numbers intentionally. Yesterday on CNN, I believe it was Anderson Cooper who said that drainage tubes were blocked by dead bodies. Anyone else hear that?
I think that now when they are forced to admit to any number of dead it will be “only x number when it could have been so much worse.” So our reaction is supposed to be “whew! only 9999 – we are so lucky! Anyway, I’m sure it will be a made-up number.
Everyone that’s there says there are bodies everywhere, but now I think they will stop asking how many and start telling the real horror stories.
Start telling the real horror stories? Sorry to be such a cynic but I can’t imagine Bushco will “allow” the numbers out. Photogs have already had cameras ripped from their hands and smart cards pulled out of cameras. They have been slammed against walls in order to have the evidence removed. Our country is under siege by our own government. Who will protect us now?
On Thursday morning, I thought I heard the BBC say 80,000 body bags, but haven’t taken time to go back and check for it. I might have mis-heard.
Although, I tend to think the higher number is the more accurate one. If this administration said the sun rose in the east, I wouldn’t believe it.
The “official” death toll for Hurricane Andrew is 56. Hurricane Andrew wiped out a good chunk of southern Flroida. Does anyone really believe tat official death toll.
Plenty of conspiracy stuff on that sorm floating on the web if anyone cares to google it.
FEMA has begun its PR campaign when Terry Ebbert, New Orleans homeland director, suggested the body count will not be as bad.
Louisiana officials may be more than willing to cooperate to stem the tide of “negative” publicity for the state.
So angry about this I can’t type.
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Just minutes ago on Dutch national radio ::
The Dutch government organization, Rijkswaterstaat¹, announced a shipment of pumps. project manager and specialists via Antonov, worlds largest air freighter at the request of US Army Corps of Engineers in Louisiana.
From the news report, the Dutch are shipping three self-supporting pumping stations (containers) and some 200 meter pipes. The units operate on diesel fuel and have a capacity of 1,000 L/sec. IMO is this capacity unlikely small, I will check this. Rijkswaterstaat did mention the pumping station filters out oils and foreign substances, which are separated as the units operate.
Rijkswaterstaat has a long-standing partnership with the Army Corps of Engineers, however the request apparently was delayed two weeks. The sacking (recall) of FEMA leader Mike Brown may be somehow connected?
The Antonov will arrive on Sunday at New Orleans airport, the Dutch specialist operate these units in emergency situations world-wide. The agreement is for a 30-day period, and as far as the Dutch are concerned may be extended. There are in total ten pumping units available in Holland, so seven are left in stock.
Rijkswaterstaat¹ – May 24, 2004 signed a Memorandum of Cooperation between Dutch specialists and the Army Corps of Engineers. (pdf file)
I do believe non-state organizations like SBM Offshore, have expertise available, which could be a great asset for New Orleans. Best they pull some of their dredgers out of a project in Bahrein.
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Found this online, note the date, Sep 6th
From HalifaxLive.com
World
Recovery of Bodies Could Take Up To Four Months; 40,000 Feared Dead
By D.L. McCracken
Sep 6, 2005, 16:25
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is warning volunteer members of the Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Team to expect to recover up to 40,000 bodies as teams of morticians, medical examiners, coroners, pathologists ready themselves for departure to New Orleans.
The 40,000 estimate does not include bodies that had been interred in the city’s above-ground mausoleums but had been displaced by Hurricane Katrina and subsequent flooding.
The National Association of Funeral Directors and Embalmers will be establishing a temporary morgue where forensics experts of not only morticians and coroners but also anthropologists, dental assistants, odontologists, photographers, and specialists can begin the grim task of identifying human remains through DNA, x-ray and fingerprinting.
Experts anticipate the body recovery process could take up to four months because of the magnitude of the search and the total destruction of such a large area.
http://tinyurl.com/8rs34 (Halifax)
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Heavy rains fell over the Mid Mississippi Valley in April of 1927 which flooded down to the lower Mississippi Valley. The river broke through 13 levees along the river that caused widespread flooding, encompassing 26,000 square miles. The catastrophe caused more than a thousand deaths and forced almost a million people from their homes. More than five million acres of farmland were ruined. The flooding occurred from April until June 1927.
The River Wins
President Coolidge did nothing. Despite pleas from governors and mayors and other officials in the flooded states, he refused to visit the area. The radio network NBC asked him to broadcast an appeal for relief funds on an historic nationwide hookup. He declined.
Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover chaired a special committee that handled the emergency. He used the position not to alleviate the suffering but to get publicity for himself. He became a hero–just about the only hero to come out of the crisis–and thus won the 1928 Republican nomination for presidential candidate.
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The Louisiana bayou, hardest working marsh in America, is in big trouble--with dire consequences for residents, the nearby city of New Orleans, and seafood lovers everywhere.National Geographic October 2004 —
It was a broiling August afternoon in New Orleans, Louisiana, the Big Easy, the City That Care Forgot. Those who ventured outside moved as if they were swimming in tupelo honey. Those inside paid silent homage to the man who invented air-conditioning as they watched TV “storm teams” warn of a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico. Nothing surprising there: Hurricanes in August are as much a part of life in this town as hangovers on Ash Wednesday.
But the next day the storm gathered steam and drew a bead on the city. As the whirling maelstrom approached the coast, more than a million people evacuated to higher ground. Some 200,000 remained, however–the car-less, the homeless, the aged and infirm, and those die-hard New Orleanians who look for any excuse to throw a party.
The storm hit Breton Sound with the fury of a nuclear warhead, pushing a deadly storm surge into Lake Pontchartrain. The water crept to the top of the massive berm that holds back the lake and then spilled over. Nearly 80 percent of New Orleans lies below sea level–more than eight feet below in places–so the water poured in. A liquid brown wall washed over the brick ranch homes of Gentilly, over the clapboard houses of the Ninth Ward, over the white-columned porches of the Garden District, until it raced through the bars and strip joints on Bourbon Street like the pale rider of the Apocalypse. As it reached 25 feet (eight meters) over parts of the city, people climbed onto roofs to escape it.
Thousands drowned in the murky brew that was soon contaminated by sewage and industrial waste. Thousands more who survived the flood later perished from dehydration and disease as they waited to be rescued. It took two months to pump the city dry, and by then the Big Easy was buried under a blanket of putrid sediment, a million people were homeless, and 50,000 were dead. It was the worst natural disaster in the history of the United States.
When did this calamity happen? It hasn’t–yet. But the doomsday scenario is not far-fetched. The Federal Emergency Management Agency lists a hurricane strike on New Orleans as one of the most dire threats to the nation, up there with a large earthquake in California or a terrorist attack on New York City. Even the Red Cross no longer opens hurricane shelters in the city, claiming the risk to its workers is too great.
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BILOXI Sept. 9, 2005 — Dutch Royal Navy sailor Rene Jasperse sweated in the hot Mississippi sun as he swung heavy bags of ice into the trunks of waiting cars lined up outside the First Baptist Church here.
Jasperse and his 189 shipmates on the frigate Van Amstel delayed their return home after two months of anti-drug patrols off Curacao to help Americans recover from Hurricane Katrina’s devastation.
<click on pic to enlarge>
“We offered our help to the United States government and the people here, and they said yes, so we came over here,” Jasperse said.
The Van Amstel is part of an international flotilla off the US Gulf of Mexico coast, supplying food, water, shelter and medical care to victims of one of the worst natural disasters in US history.
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Arkansas City -AR- during the 1927 flood
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great appreciation from people still suffering in Katrina aftermath. Amazed, fly in from the Netherlands!?
The Marines explained the Van Amstel assistance.
  <click on pic to enlarge>
The Dutch Marines have been watching the backs of the U.S. in the Caribbean – drugs patrol – the Persian Gulf– mines clearing and patrol – Afghanistan with F-16’s stationed in Kyrgystan, and Special Forces
BTW – a Dutch Chinook helicopter did fly 5,000 miles from the Netherlands to Afghanistan recently! The greatest difficulty was getting the flight plan approved – for a Chinook not being transported by an Antonov.
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The Dutch are helping out wherever needed to priorities set by FEMA and the U.S. Navy. The Dutch just got new orders: OIL RIGS in the Gulf!
Checkout location and chart damage of the installations on the oil rigs.
Well Shell, Exxon and Chevron have to eat too you know. No pastries in the frigidaire leads to starvation?
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As soon as it was a news item —
by Oui on Sat Sep 3rd, 2005 at 11:15:40 PM PST
KSLA News 12 Latest Headlines Katrina Catastrophe
The governor of Texas worries that his state may not be able to take many more evacuees from Hurricane Katrina. Governor Rick Perry says Texas is committed to doing everything it can to help, but wants to be sure it can provide the services needed, including medical care and education. Perry says local officials “are beginning to notify us that they are quickly approaching capacity.” Louisiana and the FEMA. have been alerted.
Texas has taken in over 220,000 evacuees, with more on the way. Nearly 19,000 are in the Houston Astrodome. Over 120,000 are in 97 shelters in Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, and dozens of smaller cities. Another 100,000 are in hotels and motels, with still more in churches or private homes.
Carnival Cruise Lines has canceled voyages for three of its ships so they can house victims of Hurricane Katrina. The schedules of the Ecstasy, the Sensation, and the Holiday have been cleared for the next six months. Two will dock in Galveston, Texas, and the third in Mobile, Alabama. Together, they can hold about 7,000 passengers.
The request for the cruise ships came from the FEMA. The cost of the charters was not disclosed. Carnival is apologizing to those whose cruise plans have been canceled. The number is believed to be in the tens of thousands. Anyone who re-books will get a one-hundred-dollar-per-person shipboard credit.
Previous link, reads as follows —
“With the chartering of the cruise ship Holiday to the Military Sealift Command (MSC) on behalf of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) as part of Hurricane Katrina relief efforts … “
Mmmm … housing for evacuees?
~~~
Barack Osama Demands an Investigation --FEMA Spending ● $236 Million Cruise Ship Deal Criticized
By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, September 28, 2005
On Sept. 1, as tens of thousands of desperate Louisianans packed the New Orleans Superdome and convention center, the Federal Emergency Management Agency pleaded with the U.S. Military Sealift Command: The government needed 10,000 berths on full-service cruise ships, FEMA said, and it needed the deal done by noon the next day.
The hasty appeal yielded one of the most controversial contracts of the Hurricane Katrina relief operation, a $236 million agreement with Carnival Cruise Lines for three ships that now bob more than half empty in the Mississippi River and Mobile Bay. The six-month contract — staunchly defended by Carnival but castigated by politicians from both parties — has come to exemplify the cost of haste that followed Katrina’s strike and FEMA’s lack of preparation.
Government contracting officials defended the deal. “They were the market,” Capt. Joe Manna, director of contracts at the Sealift Command, said of Carnival. “Under the circumstances, I’d say we’re getting a pretty good value.” Coburn and Obama disagreed. “Finding out after the fact that we’re spending taxpayer money on no-bid contracts and sweetheart deals for cruise lines is no way to run a recovery effort,” they said in the statement.
But the Carnival deal has come under particular scrutiny. Not only are questions being raised over the contract’s cost, but congressional investigators are examining the company’s tax status. Carnival, which is headquartered in Miami but incorporated for tax purposes in Panama, paid just $3 million in income tax benefits on $1.9 billion in pretax income last year, according to company documents. “That’s not even a tip,” said Robert S. McIntyre of Citizens for Tax Justice. U.S. companies in general pay an effective income tax rate of about 25 percent, analysts say. That would have left Carnival with a $475 million tax bill.
Carnival’s public records boast “that substantially all of our income in fiscal 2004, 2003 and 2002 . . . is exempt from U.S. federal income taxes,” largely because it maintains that its operations are not in the United States but on the high seas.
The Ecstasy and Sensation had to set sail for safer seas as Hurricane Rita rolled in. They re-docked Monday. By Tuesday morning, 625 were aboard the Ecstasy, a fraction of the 2,544 passengers once registered. An additional 820 were aboard the Sensation, down from 2,579. And those ships have fared better than the Holiday, docked in Mobile, Ala., with 342 on board. FEMA had hoped for 1,800.
▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY