US rescuers’ hopes for more survivors fade after Hurricane Michael’s destruction
A small army of rescue workers tore through rubble and wreckage from Hurricane Michael yesterday, aware their mission was rapidly changing from search and rescue to recovering the dead.
So far 18 people have been killed by the hurricane that took the south-eastern tip of the US by surprise last week with its ferociousness, but this number is likely to rise.
“We’re going into recovery mode,” Panama City fire chief Alex Baird told Reuters.
His town was one of the coastal Florida communities hit by the hurricane that made landfall on Wednesday as a Category 4 storm, with 225kph wind and deadly storm surges.
“At sunrise we’ll start again on our search,” Mr Baird said. “We hope that we’ll find more survivors but it’s more and more doubtful.”
Hurricane Michael made landfall on Mexico Beach before tearing through Georgia, the Carolinas and Virginia. It was the most intense hurricane to strike the Florida Panhandle since records began in 1851.
Beachfront buildings were lifted off their foundations and destroyed or swept away.
President Donald Trump is expected to visit Florida and Georgia this week. The White House said on Saturday that the president was committed to helping federal and local agencies with the recovery.
Attention has now turned to providing essential services to those affected by the storm. Medicine, safe water, electricity and shelter are in short supply.
More than 1,700 search-andrescue workers – many veterans of hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria last year and some from the September 11, 2001 attacks – are providing assistance.
On Saturday, crews heard cries for help and broke into a mobile home crumpled by the storm in Panama City, freeing a mother and daughter, diabetics who were trapped in a closet without insulin for two days.
In Mexico Beach, rescue workers with sniffer dogs walk house to house looking for people trapped or killed. Dogs bark to alert their handlers to the scent of a body under the rubble. Houses cleared are marked with a green piece of paper with a cross on it.
Shortly before the storm, about 290 people decided not to leave their homes in Mexico Beach, ignoring orders to flee. Police took their names, contact numbers and next-of-kin details.
Now, they are working to account for each person, unsure if they abandoned plans to stay, survived or if their homes became their graves.
Electricity and phone services are being restored but it could be weeks before power is returned.