After the Storm

After a four-day investigation, during which he queried Weather Bureau officials, Relief officials, camp officials and residents of the storm-wrecked Florida Keys, State Attorney George Ambrose Worley last week came to the conclusion that no one was responsible for the failure to evacuate veterans on relief before last fortnight's hurricane killed 458 (TIME, Sept. 16). "There will be no indictments or recommendations of indictments," said he, bundling up his report and speeding it off by automobile to Governor Dave Sholtz at Jacksonville.

These findings may have satisfied the Miami Chamber of Commerce, the Coral Gables Post of the American Legion, and other horrified groups which demanded investigations. But the verdict did not satisfy the Veterans of Foreign Wars, whose Commander-in-Chief, James E. Van Zandt, at Washington indignantly cried "Whitewash!", demanded that the President "punish officials responsible," declared that three times before the hurricane hit, veterans' committees had asked their superiors to be evacuated, only to be repulsed by guards.

Indignant, too, was Author Ernest Hemingway of Key West. After reporting the carnage in last week's New Masses, he passionately apostrophized one of the dead: "You're dead now, brother, but who left you there in the hurricane months on the Keys where a thousand men died before you in the hurricane months when they were building the road that's now washed out? Who left you there? And what's the punishment for manslaughter now?"

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