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“I have an emptiness that will never be filled ”
Caribbean family
struggles with loss
POLO, Dominican Republic (AP)
- Carlos Feliz tossed aside a rock piled
atop many others in his brother’s front
yard, leaned against an orange tree and
cried
For four days, he had been digging
through the mud and picking through
the rocks that Hurricane Georges
washed through this small town, and
he had found only four of the six bod
ies he sought
“We’ve been up and down the
entire river, and we can’t find them,”
he said He pointed at his chest “I have
an emptiness that will never be filled”
It was Feliz, 39, who dug out the
bodies ofhis older brother Julio, Julio’s
wife, Antonia, and their children
Carolina, 7, and Paola, 3. Still missing
are 18-year-old Brandy and 13-year
old Berenice.
“They’re buried down there some
where,” Feliz said quietly, gesturing
downstream. He held a handkerchief
- to his eyes.
Polo, a coffee- and avocado-farm
ing town 120 miles west of the capital,
Santo Domingo, was devastated by
flooding that Georges unleashed
Wednesday. Instant rivers carried
rocks from the mountainside that
crushed dozens of houses and buried
many more.
At least 24 people died in Polo, a
town of 14,000, and at least seven
more are missing. —
But without phone service, no one
from outside the town could know
about the destruction before Saturday,
when officials patched collapsed
bridges and bulldozers cleared mud
and rocks from at least one lane of
road.
The situation in Polo is now slight
ly better than that of hundreds of other
towns; authorities have arrived with
the first food, water and medicine. In
many other towns, nobody has had
contact with the rest of die world since
Tuesday.
Because of this, almost everyone
in the Dominican Republic believes
most of Georges’ victims have yet to
be counted. The U.S. Agency for
International Development on
Saturday said the death toll in the
Dominican Republic from Hurricane
Georges, which at the time was offi
cially 201, “is almost certain to exceed
500.”
That will include the family of
Jose Feliz, a distant relative of Carlos.
Jose Feliz; his wife Lydia; their son
Rafi and his wife, Drake; and Raft and
Drake’s two children, 9-year-old
Manguito and 4-year-old Joanna, all
were washed away when mud and
rocks poured through their humble
wood-and-corrugated metal house.
Joselin Segura, Jose’s 15-year-old
nephew, waded through the muck on
Saturday to return to the house, and he
picked through the records lying next
to a smashed and overturned Wurlitzer
jukebox.
Joselin would slip over to his
cousin Raft’s house at night to listen to
boleros and merengues by singers
such as Los Reyes del Este, Julio
Morales y Su Trio and Fernandito
Villalona.
Villalona was their favorite.
Joselin sang his favorite song, “Mi
Hermano, Mi Hermano,” or “My
Brother, My Brother,” as he looked
through the records he once listened to
with die cousin he said treated him like
a kid brother.
“I’m thinking about how it must
have been” for the family during the
hurricane, he said. ‘Trying to feel what
it must have been like.”
Five of the bodies were found die
day after the hurricane about a mile
downstream; neighbors still were
looking for the body of little Joanna.
The survivors face hardship as
they look for the dead. Residents walk
a mile up the road to a trickle of water
from a mountain stream they hope is
clean. There is little food in the stores,
and what’s there is too expensive for
most
“We haven’t eaten since the day of
the hurricane,” said Joselin’s mother,
Dalma. Joselin looked down at the
muddy floor, as if ashamed.
But as family members continue to
comb the riverbed for Joanna’s body,
they concede it may never turn up.
“I feel bad but I have to take heart
because I have my own family to pro
tect,” said Rafi’s brother, Felipe. “I
have to find them water and food”
As for the number of people
Georges killed in the Dominican
Republic, the best answer probably
came from Victor Terrero, die coun
try’s undersecretary of health who
lives 15 miles from Polo.
“I’ll confess something to you,” he
said “I have no idea.”
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THE DAILY NEBRASKAN
Georges terrifies New Orleans
Some flee, some disregard the imminent hurricane
NEW ORLEANS (AP) - The Big
Easy was decidedly uneasy Sunday, as
New Orleans prepared for its worst
nightmare hurricane - a massive storm
that would sit overhead for days, driving
Lake Pontchartrain’s waters over the
levees and submerging the city.
But thousands didn’t wait for
Hurricane Georges to arrive. They fled,
turning Interstates 10 and 55 into
bumper-to-bumper processions.
The storm, with sustained winds of
110 mph, was expected to smash the
Gulf Coast late Sunday or early today.
Its course wobbled a bit during the day,
giving hope that a slight deviation to die
east could spare New Orleans the worst
of the devastation.
Forecasters said as many as 25 inch
es of rain would fall on New Orleans,
coupled with a storm surge that could
drive millions of gallons of water up the
Mississippi River toward die city.
Tens of thousands flocked to the
city’s nine shelters, including the cav
emous Louisiana Superdome and the
sprawling Ernest Morial Convention
Center. The city had capacity to shelter
100,000 of its 450,000 people, Mayor
Marc Morial said.
But otherwise, gradually, the city
shut down. All flights in and out were
canceled; more than 1.4 million people
had been told to evacuate, and police
planned to close the interstate highways
behind them; Morial urged all non
essential businesses to lock their doors.
In a city that truly never sleeps, they
were turning out the lights: Morial
ordered a 6 p.m. curfew, and surround
ing areas followed suit
In the French Quarter, most of the
bars on Bourbon Street were closed and
covered with plywood. Hotel workers
rolled up awnings while stranded
tourists and convention-goers strolled
along the city’s most famous street
Carla Rivers, 25, of Los Angeles,
swigged beer as she walked down
Bourbon Street
House says company paid
workers to fund campaign
WASHINGTON (AP) - A major
Democratic donor’s company may
have paid its employees to donate to
Clinton’s 1996 re-election campaign,
according to House investigators.
Federal law prohibits die use of
corporate funds to make donations
directly to candidates, and outlaws
using straw donors to disguise the
real source of contributions.
Investigators for the House
Government Reform and Oversight
Committee have gathered payroll
records suggesting employees of
Future Tech International received
$1,000 bonus checks a few days
before they wrote personal checks
for the same amount to the
Clinton/Gore campaign in 1995.
The Miami computer company is
headed by Mark Jimenez, who regu
larly contributes to the Democrats.
In an affidavit, one former
employee told investigators that
Jimenez’s assistant told her Jimenez
wanted to raise $20,000 from Future
Tech employees for the Clinton
campaign. She was asked to make a
$1,000 contribution for which she
would be reimbursed.
“I agreed to make the contribu
tion and gave a personal check in the
amount of $1,000 made payable to
the Clinton/Gore campaign,” wrote
Daria Haycox, a former employee,
in an affidavit signed Sept. 8.
“Shortly after... I received a bonus
check from Future Tech in the
amount of $1,000.”
Neither Jimenez nor his compa
ny has been charged with any
wrongdoing.
A supporter of Bob Dole’s 1996
campaign and several Democratic
donors and fund-raisers have been
charged or convicted for laundering
contributions in others’ names since
the criminal investigation into 1996
fund-raising abuses began nearly
two years ago.
Payroll records for Future Tech
show on Sept. 8, 1995, Haycox and
six other employees received $ 1,000
bonuses. Five days later, the
employees each gave the
Clinton/Gore campaign a $1,000
donation, Federal Election
Commission records show.
Campaign records show that 22
Future Tech employees gave $1,000
each to the Clinton campaign on that
same day.
Perot condemns Clinton
ATLANTA (AP) - Breaking an
uncharacteristic silence on the
President Clinton-Monica Lewinsky
affair, Ross Perot offered a charac
teristically blunt opinion.
“Any man who would conduct
himself in such an emotional, unsta
ble manner and bring worldwide
shame, first to his family, and then to
a vulnerable young woman and
finally to the United States of
America is unfit to be president of
this great country,” Perot said.
“If he loves his country, he will
go”
Perot called the president “men
tally and emotionally unstable” in
his comments Saturday to delegates
of the Reform Party, which he
founded before running for presi
dent in 1996.
Perot’s speech was part of the
party’s second national convention,
which began Friday and ended
Sunday with discussion about how
the party should nominate candi
dates for the 2000 elections. Perot
gave no indication whether he would
seek the presidential nomination.
Perot’s speech was criticized by
Bob Dole, the Republican standard
bearer in 1996.
“Ross Perot says a lot of things
that I think are beyond the pale, and
he hasn’t changed any,” Dole said
Sunday on CNN’s “Late Edition.”
“Again I think Ross Perot deals
in overstatement a lot, and it doesn’t
serve any real purpose.”
And Clinton adviser James
Carville took a shot at Perot on
NBC’s “Meet the Press,” calling him
“a man that would sure be able to
recognize mental and emotional
instability. So I wouldn’t pay much
attention to what he said. He’s about
a half a quart low, to tell you the
truth.”
“We been at it all night If we die, at
least we’ll die happy,” she said.
“Besides, if you’re drank enough, you
aren’t scared.”
Some people carried plastic bags of
junk food to the hotel rooms where they
planned to hunker down in the storm.
Jim Porter, of Ardmore, Okla., bought
two bottles of water, three bags of pota
to chips and peanuts.
By 6 p.m., the hurricane’s center
was about 35 miles east of the mouth of
the Mississippi River, or about 120
miles east-southeast of New Orleans.
Wind blew around the eye at a sustained
110 mph, and forecasters said that
might increase to 120 mph, making it a
Category 3 storm.
Georges was moving toward the
northwest at 8 mph but was expected to
gradually slow, bringing its turbulent
center near the coast sometime late in
the day. But hurricane-force winds of at
least 74 mph extended as much as 70
miles out from the center.
German election returns
indicate Kohl era ending
BONN, Germany (AP) - Gerhard
Schroeder and his Social Democrats
won national elections Sunday, usher
ing in the first change of government
Germany has seen after 16 years of con
servative rule under Chancellor Helmut
Kohl, the West’s longest-serving leader.
“The Kohl era has come to an end,”
Schroeder proclaimed to the cheering
party faithfhl. “Our task will be to thor
oughly modernize our country and to
unblock the backlog of reform.”
Schroeder, 54, will be the first ofhis
generation, rooted in the 1960s leftist
movement, to lead Europe’s biggest
nation. Many voters have known no
other chancellor than Kohl, and the
prospect of change brought tears of joy.
Schroeder told the ARD television
network he would begin talks today on
building a coalition. His party won 41
percent of the vote, according to exit
polls. The Christian Democrats, win
ning just 35 percent, lost its parliamen
tary majority.
Israel OK’s U.S. plan in part
NEW YORK (AP) - Secretary of
State Madeleine Albright’s push for a
partial West Bank accord cleared a
major hurdle Sunday as Israel largely
accepted a U.S. proposal for how much
land to yield to Palestinians.
But Israel’s ambassador to the
United Nations, Dore Gold, said,“If
there’s no security, there is no deal.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu said Sunday on CNN that
Israel’s agreement with the United States
was “almost complete about die amount
of land that we would hand over. It is ter
ritory that is uninhabited by Palestinians
but is very important for our security.”
Netanyahu said the remaining issue
was “to make sure that the land that we
hand over to the Palestinians does not
become a base for continued terrorist
attacks against Israel.”
On the Palestinian side, Yasser
Kidwa, who heads the Palestinian dele
gation to the United Nations, said reach
ing a final agreement was impossible
now. He said Albright and her team were
trying to reach agreements on several
issues, and “we are not against that”
