Assessing the Scope of Damage

Hunt for Survivors Continues as Officials Lower Death Toll; Residents Jockey for Supplies

BILOXI, Miss., Aug. 31 -- In towns ravaged by surging waters and neighborhoods that had only begun to count the dead, Mississippi searched for survivors yesterday, and struggled to comprehend the devastation that Hurricane Katrina had wrought.

Rescue crews continued to pull survivors from the wreckage of buildings in this hard-hit Gulf Coast community, and emergency management officials vowed to keep up the hunt. Trained dogs were pressed into the search along the heavily damaged residential areas along U.S. Highway 90, fronting the Gulf of Mexico.

"We know there are people in other parts of the county who are alive and could be rescued and have not been," said Col. Joe Spraggins, civil defense director for Harrison County. "We're trying to get to them. . . . It's happening every minute that we're finding somebody in the rubble or hanging out of a building and has been fighting [to live] for the last few days."

After putting the estimated death toll at 100 on Tuesday, Spraggins pulled back the figure on Wednesday, saying it was wrong. He said officials knew the death toll was 40 as of noon on Tuesday, but a final figure was unavailable.

Part of the error was that officials had believed that 30 people were swept away at Biloxi's Quiet Water Beach apartments. While the complex was devastated, the death toll there probably was much lower, Spraggins said.

About 1,100 Harrison County residents remained in 20 shelters Wednesday, but the number of refugees was likely to increase as other residents returned to find their homes gone, officials said. Federal Emergency Management Agency officials were working with local authorities to determine how to house thousands of people.

"We may go into a tent-city world," Spraggins said. "I don't know what we're going to do, but we have to do something. We're still in hurricane season, and another one could hit."

Federal and state authorities said 85 truckloads of water were on their way, even as residents complained that relief supplies were taking too long. Eighteen trucks of water left over from Hurricane Dennis had been stationed in buildings along the Gulf Coast, but they were lost after Katrina destroyed or damaged the buildings.

About 2,500 utility workers from around the country arrived in the region by Wednesday to rebuild transmission lines and begin restoring power, a job that could take four weeks. Another 2,500 workers are expected soon. Inspectors concluded Wednesday that at least 70 percent of the county's power transmission lines were destroyed or seriously damaged.

Even as survivors complained that aid was not arriving quickly enough, many looked at the devastation around them and said their predominant emotion was gratitude. They were alive.

"I'd say we're blessed," said Gia James, 46, a food service manager for the local school system. "We're doing all right. We're just uncomfortable -- no air conditioning. We'll make it."

James stood in a queue of about 100 people outside a drugstore, hoping to buy snacks, water, paper towels and other items to help get her two children and one grandchild through the next few days. The family lives in central Gulfport, next to Biloxi, and rode out the storm in a one-story home, suffering only the loss of plasterboard in the kitchen.