I am taking the liberty of posting this article to our genealogical list
because I believe in one way or another -- this affects us all. Most of us
have traced our origins to the North Carolina area or have had ancestors pass
through this land. I was horrified by the photo's of old and new coffins
floating and then the destruction to homes and farms. Can you imagine how
life is in this area? I think not.
What can we do?
Demand information and find out from your pastor tomorrow what your
denomination's disaster relief agency's are doing. The Red Cross and other
relief agencies certainly need our support.
Any other suggestions?
Put yourself in the shoes of those you read about:
N CAROLINA TURNS INTO '18,000-SQUARE MILE CESSPOOL'
The viscous soup of floodwater, sewage, hog waste, animal and human
carcasses, chemicals, gasoline, fertilizer, pesticides and other pollutants
churns in Roseboro, N.C -- more than a week after Hurricane Floyd passed
through.
"Floyd has created a public health threat unprecedented in the region,"
reports Sunday's PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER, "and any day now, on the surface of
this 18,000-square-mile cesspool, billions of mosquitoes will begin to
hatch."
The paper's Richard Lezin Jones reports: "At week's end, epidemiologists,
health and environmental officials were expressing concern about the
possibility of an outbreak of gastrointestinal and other diseases, such as
pathogenic e. coli, caused by contaminated drinking water."
A letter to the DRUDGE REPORT says too much about the disaster:
Dear Mr. Drudge,
The enormity of the calamity that has stricken eastern North Carolina is not
comprehended by the national media, federal government officials or American
citizens in general.
My town of New Bern, NC, was one of the few east of I-95 spared by most of
the mind-boggling levels of flooding in the aftermath of Hurricanes Dennis
and Floyd. But from my vantage point, I see a level of destruction and
suffering throughout the Coastal Plain region of the state that is
indescribable.
The flood has been categorized by government officials and by meteorologists
and other scientists as a 500-year or 1,000-year flood. Ironically, most of
the areas swamped by the deluge are not even in so-called "flood plains."
The flood is evolving into a catastrophe of Biblical proportions. As the
waters slowly subside over the eastern section of the state, corpses are
being discovered in buildings, automobiles, trees, etc. You can expect the
official death toll to climb in coming days and weeks as thousands of square
miles of submerged towns and rural areas emerge from the slowly waning flood.
In addition, millions of drowned farm animals and hundreds of millions of
gallons of animal manure spilled from the waste pits of giant hog and poultry
factories combined with unprecedented spills of petroleum products, chemicals
and assorted toxic substances may well result in an unimaginable
environmental disaster.
The destruction suffered by industry, agriculture and other enterprises; the
loss of wages as a result of flooded factories and businesses; and the damage
to highways, bridges, water plants, utility plants and other infrastructure
may well be in the tens of billions of dollars.
Tens of thousands of the people who survived, including those in shelters as
well as those in residences isolated by surrounding flood waters, are living
like third-world refugees and peasants. When the waters recede, their
existence will continue to be pitiful because much of eastern North Carolina
will be like a war-ravaged wasteland for months or even years.
Billions of dollars and untold military manpower and assets have been
committed by the United States to remote countries all over the world in
recent years for political, economic and security reasons. I fail to
comprehend why a massive effort on a similar scale isn't under way at this
moment to help relieve the misery, bring about stability, safety and
sanitation, and assist with the recovery and reconstruction of a region of
the American South that is undergoing human suffering on a scale not seen
since the Civil War.
The purpose of this message is to bring this desperate situation to your
attention. In my opinion, the response of federal agencies to this enormous
and ongoing tragedy has been too slow and too meager. I suspect this is
because the responsible authorities, though well-meaning, have yet to grasp
the apocalyptic scale of the flood and the incredible consequences that are
only now becoming apparent.
If you decide to research the situation, as I hope you will, please get your
information from the local broadcast and print media in eastern North
Carolina, not from the national media. The national media has attempted to
frankly report the flooding but they tend to focus on the dire straits of a
single town or area without imparting to the public the overwhelming reality
that the disaster afflicting the locality they are reporting from is
duplicated in towns, villages and farmlands that cover a third of the entire
state.
Eastern North Carolina needs help much more rapidly, on a scale far more
massive and with a sense of urgency far more acute than what seems to be
coming forth so far. Please help get the word out, Drudge.
Respectfully,
New Bern, NC