Katrina

[charlton97]

Once again, a natural disaster has brought death and distruction on a truly biblical scale. Katrina has managed to achieve what no terror organisation could ever wish to do.....effectively bring down the infrastructure of not one, but three US States. As someone who worked in Thailand in the aftermath of the Tsunami earlier this year, it is startling how similar the images of death and distruction are from those embedded in my personal memory from working in Phuket. To all those involved in the recovery effort I salute you, to those involved in the identification of victims, I salute you. Many of you will have friends and family in the Deep South. I hope that you have heard good news. Best wishes from your friend Dave Charlton across The Pond.

[Whisler]

Just to help spread the word, I've been informed and requested to pass along that volunteers with Law Enforcement experience are being requested to volunteer 40 to 80 hour tours of duty at ground zero. Although I don't have all the particulars, I believe information can be found through Fema.gov, Volunteers In Police Service (VIPS) http://www.policevolunteers.org/ and the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP)http://www.theiacp.org/documents/index. ... ent_id=732.

My Department is providing a vehicle and a few of our officers are heading out there Thursday for a couple of weeks.

I've not heard if the Medical Examiners Office needs any assistance with ID issues. If anyone is aware, please post what information you have.

[Steve Everist]

A week ago I had heard that FBI examiners may be going down to the GC soon, so they may be there now that the ID process is moving ahead. Also, DMORT now has their operations set up and I think they've got examiners on staff, so I would assume that they have some called in currently too.

[s wiese]

I have a friend on D-MORT who is down there right now. I talked to her last night. Things are bad, as you can guess, but worse than even she imagined. Right now they are in 2-3 week shifts, with a week or so home and then scheduled to come back except as of yesterday all home trips are cancelled. They do not have enough people to do all of the work that needs to be done regarding ID of those who died in the flooding. I just tried to call and did get through, but she was not there. I will keep trying and find out if there is a way for those of you interested to sign up. Conditions are horrible, etc., but they do need help. More as I find it out; hopefully the feds will allow non-D-MORT folks to come in and get this done. With the change in 'management' at the upper levels, perhaps they will be amenable to the extra qualified hands available.

-Sandra

[sandra wiese]

I got a hold of my friend. She says that things are changing "by the minute" down there, especially as the military has taken over recovery operations. Essentially the working plan they had been going on has been scrapped and today is a new plan. Tomorrow might just well be a new, new plan. The jist is that she did talk with her boss there about allowing non-federal people to come in and was told 'no' that they are sticking with the people they have.

So that's the word as far as I know. If anyone knows any more or better information, please post.

Sandra