Mississippi suffers in angry shadow of New Orleans [View All]

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9/04/2005

Mississippi suffers in angry shadow of New Orleans
By Emily Wagster Pettus
Inland Valley Daily Bulletin

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.

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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.

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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 such as ice, gasoline and medicine have been too slow to arrive.

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