GALVESTON -- A forensic anthropologist today is examining the decayed body of a woman discovered in debris from Hurricane Ike on an island off the Bolivar Peninsula, a Galveston County medical examiner's official said. An autopsy concluded that the woman drowned, said investigator John Florence. If she is determined to have been a victim of Hurricane Ike, the woman's death will be the 19th in Galveston County blamed on the storm and the 41st on the Texas coast. The body was found Thursday by boaters who came ashore at Goat Island and discovered the body amid piles of debris, he said.
After spending six very sobering weeks in southeast Texas, it appears that the story just keeps getting sadder. Even for someone who's lived and worked in three different war zones, I found that Hurrican Ike took a huge emotional toll on me. Perhaps if I hadn't lived there for ten years, I might have been able to exercise a degree of professional detachment. I had lived there, though, and every day seemed sadder than the last. Each day brought something- and some days several things- that stopped me in my tracks. The destruction, the devastation, the suffering, the stories...I don't know how a person with even the barest shred of humanity can see the things I saw and experience what I experience without being profoundly and deeply affected.
