Ivan death rumors run rampant in Florida
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| Thu, 09-23-2004 - 12:37pm |
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apus_story.asp?category=1110&slug=Ivan%20Death%20Rumors
Thursday, September 23, 2004 · Last updated 12:53 a.m. PT
Ivan death rumors run rampant in Florida
By BILL KACZOR
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
PENSACOLA, Fla. -- The rumor mill has been going full tilt since Hurricane Ivan whipped the Florida Panhandle with 130 mph winds last week.
Heard the one about a tornado hitting a hospital and killing 157 people? Or that a 40-foot tidal wave washed 20 people to their deaths? How about the hundreds of bodies hidden away in a morgue?
Escambia County officials have been busy knocking such stories down all week.
On Tuesday, Sheriff Ron McNesby denied that he or his staffers are hiding the bodies of people supposedly killed during and after the storm. And he insisted that the portable morgues parked behind Pensacola's Sacred Heart Hospital, site of the county's morgue, isn't housing "dozens and hundreds of bodies."
"They're there, but they're not full of people," McNesby said. "How anybody could possibly believe that a sheriff anywhere in the United States could hide 100 dead people is beyond my imagination."
Another storm-related death was reported Wednesday, bringing Escambia County's toll to 11 victims, the state count to at least 19 victims and the national number to at least 57 victims.
Seven people remain missing in Escambia, the poorest county in Florida.
"Those people are not believed necessarily to be deceased," McNesby said. "They are simply unaccounted for."
McNesby's major crimes unit - seven officers and two supervisors - has been focusing on finding the missing. Search teams have gone to the homes of people who are reported missing and officers try to contact their family members.
Even so, the rumors persist.
One frantic report about a body being found turned out to be a mannequin. Other rumors had it that a local utility was giving out $300 food vouchers and that ambulances were secretly removing bodies from a devastated neighborhood in the dark of night.
Pensacola News Journal opinion editor Carl Wernicke has been fielding some of the rumor calls, and wrote a column debunking them. He said one caller claimed to receive information from four people he considered good sources.
"I said, 'Sir, just disregard it,'" Wernicke said. "He said 'I want to, but I consider these good, reliable people.'"
Escambia County spokeswoman Sonya Smith gets occasional calls from reporters checking out stories about hidden bodies and other rumors. "Once we know there's no truth to it," she said, "we pitch the phone message."
| Thu, 09-23-2004 - 1:51pm |
| Thu, 09-23-2004 - 4:45pm |






