Following up on the Jimani floodings, the new figure for recovered remains now stands at 410, while people continue to search for an explanation as to what happened, reports El Caribe newspaper. The answers being given stretch from the technical to the mystic. Some, like Pedro Santana, the supervisor of Education in the area, say that it was the extraction of sand and gravel from the riverbed. Santana criticized the fact that ?anyone? could take what they wanted. Tito Herasme, the provincial governor, says that this is nonsense since ?the sand from the river is no good for construction.? Herasme also disputed the fact that the dike built by the government contributed in any way to the flooding, an idea advanced by Radhames Bautista. That accusation cost Bautista a battle of words with the director of Frontier Development, Ignacio Caraballo, on the day President Mejia visited the area. When President Balaguer ordered the construction of 40 houses in the area, the riverbed was well defined. When the flashflood occurred there were 246 families living in the area. What is sad, according to Malcom Santana, a PLD activist in the city, is that residents of the area were warned at 10pm that day to get out of the area because of the unusually intense rainfall. Some locals say they used to offer up sacrifices to the river that from time to time would overflow its banks on the way to Lake Enriquillo. The idea was to pacify the river so that a repetition of the 1912 disaster would not occur. Younger members of the community remember Dona Marcela, one of the oldest residents, but who no longer lives there. Based on her legend, they have developed the theory that the White River came to collect all the sacrifices owed to it over the past years, and to take food to its friend, Lake Enriquillo.