Katrina death toll swells to 372

[Brightmore]

Katrina death toll swells to 372
AFP
September 10, 2005

The official death toll from Hurricane Katrina has risen to at least 372, with 154 confirmed dead in and around the flooded city of New Orleans, officials said on Saturday.

"At this time, officials working in conjunction with coroners from local parishes have confirmed 154 deaths," the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals said, raising Thursday's state toll from 118.

The death toll in Mississippi rose to 211 on Saturday from 204, according to the state's Emergency Management Agency, bringing the total toll in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida to 372.

Officials estimated last week that Katrina could have killed up to 10 000 people in New Orleans, but officials in the city, which is still largely covered by putrid waters concealing a harvest of corpses, said on Friday that the toll could be far lower than expected.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has 25 000 body bags on hand in Louisiana to cope with the possibility of a massive death toll following one of America's worst natural disasters, state officials revealed on Wednesday.

But the process of recovering bodies from flooded areas, confirming they are indeed victims of Katrina and logging them into morgues is a painstaking and time-consuming one, resulting in a lag between the actual and official death tolls.

Ninety of the Louisiana bodies are in a massive emergency morgue in the Louisiana town of St Gabriel, and 25 are in a coroner's office in the New Orleans-area parish of Jefferson, the state health officials said.

Another 33 victims are in the custody of an international body recovery firm contracted by Louisiana officials.

http://www.news24.com/News24/World/Hurricane_Katrina/0,,2-10-1942_1768448,00.html

[nadinbrzezinski]

1. ok this is amazing

But the process of recovering bodies from flooded areas, confirming they are indeed victims of Katrina and logging them into morgues is a painstaking and time-consuming one, resulting in a lag between the actual and official death tolls.

thinnk what that says, confirming they are victims of katrina... ok, any emergency training usually says that people killed during this week adn floating on the water are gonna be victims... hmm wanna bet if somebody died from a stroke due to the increased blood pressure as seeing their home surrounded is gonna be classified as stroke and not katrina related?

[fooj]

2. Do you remember the long line of 18 wheelers driving to the morgue

in Mississippi? How about the corpses at the airport all lined up in a row? There were dozens and dozens of them. They lost dozens of people at the hospitals, as well. How about Aaron Neville's neice saying that at one point they walked through the water and walked past floating bodies that were everywhere?


IMO, the WH was spinning furiously yesterday. They didn't anticipate CNN going to court re: media blackout. Oops.

Peace.

[melody]

3. exactly

There are a thousand missing city/county employees alone in Greater New Orleans. There are a thousand missing children. Now hopefully most of those people are just "misplaced" in shelters, but the reality is many are not.

Lets hope it's a real count, whatever it is. And we can only hope the real count will be low.

[fooj]

7. 2000 Postal Workers (Federal Employees) missing, as well.

Peace.

[DawnneOBTS]

4. Thank goodness somebody else remembers...

...seeing the trucks. More than one. A lot of bodies can fit into a semi, we aren't stupid. "They" haven't "zapped" everyone's brain yet so we still remember Katrina and the murderer W.

[fooj]

8. Yep. Sadly, there were at least a dozen ...if not more.

Peace.

[annabanana]

12. I remember.. and I thought CNN

was going to follow them and put up a camp at St. Gabriel... I thought that's what the lawsuit was about...

yet I see nothing about it..

[daleo]

6. They will probably parse the numbers carefully

Many will be called caused of death "undetermined", which Bush etc. will attempt to use to get off the hook.

[PATRICK]

5. So the story on AAR(Schultz or Lionel?)

where the fireman's relative called in and said they had 1200 bodies in a
St. Bernard's Parish high school(they have two) is a lie or mistake? Sounded like a credible ground report to me.

of course ANY reporter could check that out. Are they parsing casualties as to "identified" bodies? Are they discounting corpses as "possible graveyard eruptions" until forced to? Are they counting AT ALL, the people who died waiting for rescue, not in the floodwaters?

There has been a happy face soothing meme going out that "it's not so bad and help is swinging into action" that is understandable, unconscionable and hitchhiking on the needed efforts to soothe residents enough to convince them to evacuate.

I think this should be challenged because something sneaky IS going on here. The tsunami casualty counts were presented the same way. Unjustified and brainless assumption that it "wasn't so bad" because the bodies hadn't been lined up officially yet. Common sense would tell one it is too early to make the happy face assumption, yet I wonder too how THIS tally timeline compares to the tsunami. It seems to me the swelling count went much faster over there than here.

[booksenkatz]

9. Woo-hoo! Any number less than 10K is a dodged bullet!

Or so the memo says.
:puke: :cry: :sarcasm:

[nadinbrzezinski]

10. gee I thought I had missed the memo

thanks,

Better put on a happy face

By the way, the target number is ... under 3000

[annabanana]

11. got to keep good ol' 9/11 as the #1 disaster in the US

since that is the disaster that gave the idiot son his numbers...

[Zynx]

13. 372 is really bad in this country.

Usually Hurricanes here kill maybe 50 on the high end. Even if we "only" have 2,000 dead, that is outrageous for the most powerful nation on earth.

[Tesha]

14. "383, but will rise significantly" sez the 6:00 TV news. (NT)

[fedsron2us]

15. BBC TV news in the UK showed corpses still lying in the street

well over a week after their news team had first spotted them. The victims had finally been placed in a body bag but had still not been collected. It is these pictures not the final count of the dead that is going to be the lasting memory of this debacle. No amount of political spinning of the numbers is going to change that situation.

[Dirty Hippie]

16. I spoke to a friend at my gym who received a call

from a friend of hers who is working in Mississippi. He said they were clearing a wall of debris about 14 feet high and it was full of bodies.

He also said the media is not telling the truth about the number of dead.

My guess; the media is not yet aware of the numbers and FEMA is not making any effort to inform them.