curling said:
sorry and thanks too. That is very sad indeed.
Even more sad....
Search-and-rescue teams finding bodies, not survivors
By SCOTT DODD
Knight Ridder Newspapers
BILOXI – Ranger was getting discouraged.
He’s a black Lab. His job is to find people trapped in wreckage. Wednesday, he found nothing but bodies.
Ranger is part of a search-and-rescue team of dogs and firefighters from Central Florida. They arrived Tuesday and spent Wednesday going home to home and building to building, searching for survivors.
They found a few who had climbed into their attics to escape raging waves, then couldn’t get out once their homes collapsed. Biloxi Fire Department Battalion Chief Joe Boney said rescuers still hope to find more people alive, although he acknowledged the task was getting harder. Today, firefighters may have to shift to recovering bodies.
"We have to do our job," Boney said, "and right now, our job is to rescue."
But throughout the day Wednesday, it became clear that few survivors were left in the shattered structures where some people rode out the storm.
Ranger and his handler, Patrick Murphy, searched one apartment house where residents had been smashed by falling concrete. The search team couldn’t remove the bodies – they’ll need heavy equipment to get them out from under the slabs – so they tagged them and moved on.
They marked most houses with a red "X," meaning unsafe for entry, and a number below, showing the number of bodies inside.
This particular search team, Florida Task Force 3, had a lot of work last year, after four storms hit Florida. Two of their dogs, Marley and Jessie, searched the wreckage at the World Trade Center after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks (Ranger was too young).
But they’ve never seen anything like this, Murphy said – mile after mile of wreckage and death.
"It’s very stressful on the dog," he said.