JACKSON, Miss. — Mississippi hurricane survivors looked around Saturday
and wondered just how long it would take to get food, clean water and
shelter. And they were more than angry at the federal government and the
national news media.
GREG CAMPBELL / AP
Manus Dace, 11, of Jackson, Miss., colors on Friday inside the
Hurricane Katrina Red Cross shelter at the Mississippi Coliseum in
Jackson.
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Richard Gibbs was disgusted by reports of looting in New Orleans and
upset at the lack of attention hurricane victims in his state were
getting.
"I say burn the bridges and let 'em all rot there," he said. "We're
suffering over here too, but we're not killing each other. We've got to
help each other. We need gas and food and water and medical supplies."
Gibbs and his wife, Holly, have been stuck at their flooded home in
Gulfport just off the Biloxi River. Water comes up to the second floor,
they are out of gasoline, and food supplies are running perilously low.
Until recently, they also had Holly's 75-year-old father, who has a
pacemaker and severe diabetes, with them. Finally they got an ambulance
to take him to the airport so he could be airlifted to Lafayette, La.,
for medical help.
In poverty-stricken north Gulfport, Grover Chapman was angry at the lack
of aid.
"Something should've been on this corner three days ago," Chapman, 60,
said Saturday as he whipped up dinner for his neighbors.
He used wood from his demolished produce stand to cook fish, rabbit,
okra and butter beans he'd been keeping in his freezer. Although many
houses here, about five miles inland, are still standing, they are
severely damaged. Corrugated tin roofs lie scattered on the ground.
"I'm just doing what I can do," Chapman said. "These people support me
with my produce stand every day. Now it's time to pay them back."
One neighbor, 78-year-old Georgia Smylie, knew little about what's
happening elsewhere. She was too worried about her own situation.
"My medicine is running out. I need high blood pressure medicine,
medicine for my heart," she said.
Larry Sabato, a University of Virginia political scientist, said he's
been watching hours of Katrina coverage every day and most of the
national media attention has focused on the devastation and looting in
New Orleans.
"Mississippi needs more coverage," Sabato said. "Until people see it on
TV, they don't think it's real."
Along the battered Mississippi Gulf Coast, crews started searching boats
for corpses on Saturday. Several shrimpers are believed to have died as
they tried to ride out the storm aboard their boats on the Intracoastal
Waterway.
President Bush toured ravaged areas of the Mississippi coast on Friday
with Gov. Haley Barbour and other state officials. They also flew over
flooded New Orleans.
"I'm going to tell you, Mississippi got hit much harder than they did,
but what happened in the aftermath - it makes your stomach hurt to go
miles and miles and miles and the houses are all under water up to the
roof," Barbour said.
Keisha Moran has been living in a tent in a department store parking lot
in Bay St. Louis with her boyfriend and three young children since the
hurricane struck. She said National Guardsmen have brought her water but
no other aid so far, and she was furious that it took Bush several days
before he came to see the damage in Mississippi.
"It's how many days later? How many people are dead?" Moran said.
Mississippi's death toll from Hurricane Katrina stood at 144 on
Saturday, according to confirmed reports from coroners and the
Mississippi Emergency Management Agency. Barbour had said Friday the
total was 147, but he didn't provide a county-by-county breakdown.
In a strongly worded editorial, The Sun Herald of Biloxi-Gulfport
pleaded for help and questioned why a massive National Guard presence
wasn't already visible.
"We understand that New Orleans also was devastated by Hurricane
Katrina, but surely this nation has the resources to rescue both that
metropolitan (area) and ours," the newspaper editorialized, saying
survival basics like ice, gasoline and medicine have been too slow to
arrive.
"We are not calling on the nation and the state to make life more
comfortable in South Mississippi, we are calling on the nation and the
state to make life here possible," the paper wrote.
Associated Press reporter David Royse and Brian Skoloff in Gulfport
and Jay Reeves in Bay St. Louis contributed to this report.
