Where's the list of the missing? No registry, no comfort for Katrina fams.

[Maddy McCall]

There are approximately 300 cases of missing people in South Mississippi that are still unsolved because of poor communications and a waste of time and resources in the weeks and months after Katrina came ashore, according to several local officials involved in the search. This is no comfort to those still seeking loved ones, like the families of Tonette Jackson, Clay Lee Lantier, Claudia Morrison and Larry Blackmon, all of whom have been missing since Aug. 29.

"We haven't heard from him," said Biloxi resident Pamela Magee, Blackmon's ex-girlfriend and mother of his 17-year-old son, Prince. "I think he stayed at home, at Back Bay Apartments, and got washed away."

No official list of missing people has been released by any state agencies, said Deloris Lewis, a spokeswoman for the Department of Public Safety, which is supposed to be coordinating the search. There are no plans to release the list or any information on the missing people, she said.

/snip

"We had two meetings here (with Louisiana missing people hotline officials) about forwarding Mississippi information to us," Hargrove said. "That didn't happen. They sat on this information. We had our missing person task force up and going and we were getting a lot of stuff done. We were able to track a lot of people down." Then on New Year's Eve, an official in charge of the Louisiana hotline showed up with a box with 300 new cases, Hargrove said. "When we shut down our missing persons operation, all of a sudden here they come... dropping in all these files," Hargrove said. "Now we have to re-task people. We're trying to work it in with our regular duties."

http://www.sunherald.com/mld/sunherald/14021508.htm
**************************************************

My opinion: Truth be told, we will never know how many people are missing or were washed away. The problem is that FEMA and state officials were way to eager to finalize the list of dead, even before all homes on the coast and in NOLA had been searched. We will never know how many perished.

[rodeodance]

1. what a mess!

...."We had two meetings here (with Louisiana missing people hotline officials) about forwarding Mississippi information to us," Hargrove said. "That didn't happen. They sat on this information. We had our missing person task force up and going and we were getting a lot of stuff done. We were able to track a lot of people down." Then on New Year's Eve, an official in charge of the Louisiana hotline showed up with a box with 300 new cases, Hargrove said. "When we shut down our missing persons operation, all of a sudden here they come... dropping in all these files," Hargrove said. "Now we have to re-task people. We're trying to work it in with our regular duties."

[Maddy McCall]

2. The problem is that the missing/dead list was finalized Oct. 1, IIRC.

That was only a month after the hurricane hit, and much of NOLA was STILL UNDER WATER. Much of the coast had not even been explored because the destruction was so severe.

[zann725]

11. I thought the "list" was finalized recently w/ that buckshot to the face

of the guy who ran the Katrina morgue facilities. Or at least the details of the "unreported." Probably just a coincidence....

[ConcernedCanuk]

3. Ur government doesn't CARE!! - got it??

.
.
.

They spend more in a month killing Iraqis than they will ever spend on taking care of their own citizens.

The USA Administration is a killing machine - not a "caring" machine

Get used to it . .

[Maddy McCall]

4. Pardon me?

Are you talking to me, or rhetorically?

I don't expect my government to "care." I do expect my government to use my taxes to provide reasonable services to people in my region, on of which is a list of missing or dead Katrina victims.

[ConcernedCanuk]

5. "I don't expect my government to "care." - well then - U should be happy

.
.
.

Cuz they don't

[Maddy McCall]

6. No, I shouldn't be "happy."

And I'm not happy. My home was damaged by Katrina. What I expected was a FEMA inspector to come see the damage. What I expected was for FEMA to send ice and water to our town, which was directly in the path of Katrina.

I *do* expect other Americans to care about what we, as their fellow American citizens, went through.

As a taxpayer and an American citizen, I *do* expect my government to RESPOND, not to CARE, when there is a national disaster.

I'm wise enough to know that a government is an institution, and institutions are incapable of "caring." People ARE capable of caring, and I appreciate the concern that people all over the nation showed to us as we went through this disaster.

[tom_paine]

13. Not true. They do so care!

They care about artificially suppressing the Katrina Death Toll for as long as possible so it stays well below the death toll of 9-11 for political purposes (can't give the Dems a talking point that shines so brightly with truth that not even the shrill shrieks of O'Reichley, Insannity, and Annthrax can obfuscate, no matter how much nonsense and "octupus ink" they squirt out their asses...which is where they talk and think from).

Fuck the families, the crying wives, husbands, fathers and daughters suffering, knowing that if their loved ones haven't made contact by now, they almost certainly never will. Fuck the desperate and devastated for wanting the closure of a death certificate so they can get on with their lives now that it's clear their loved one is actually dead.

These Busheviks barely qualify as human beings, they are Nazis and while they are kinder and gentler than the original version for the moment, how easily they could "kick it up a notch".

People who could do this could make soap out of the skin of Liberal Enemies of the State (of course they will never be asked to do exactly that, because Totalitarianism must shed it's skin and take a new form after each time it is defeated).

[mopinko]

7. what a fucking disgrace!

we are a god damn third world country. can't even pick up the god damn dead bodies.

[lovuian]

8. Wheres the memorial to the dead and the actual death

numbers I haven't seen them posted...

[Canuckistanian]

9. Where's the Red Cross on this?

Isn't this one of their specialties? Or am I thinking of the ICRC?

[Maddy McCall]

10. From the article, RC refuses to release info b/c of privacy policies

Complicating things was the refusal by Red Cross officials to share the names of people in their shelters, citing privacy policies, Stokes said. It took a couple of weeks and a court order to get the names of children staying in their shelters, because it is illegal to withhold information on the whereabouts of children reported missing under any circumstance.

While Red Cross officials were unable to be reached before press time for this story, Stokes said she had not heard of any negotiations to make information on evacuees easier to obtain from them.

[IsIt1984Yet]

12. How many of the missing are children?

:cry:

So very sad.

[Maddy McCall]

14. Welcome to DU, IsIt1984Yet

:hi:

I know that more than fifty children in foster care were missing from one Mississippi Coast county at one point. :(

[newyawker99]

18. Hi IsIt1984Yet!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[intheflow]

15. I just came on to post this, Maddie.

Good to see someone beat me to it, which is not always with case with Sun-Herald articles. This is an issue I've been particularly interested in right along. Along with no way to keep real records on the missing, there are no real mechanisms for tracking who's left the Coast and/or where they've gone.

The whole thing just makes me crazy! :banghead:

[Kurovski]

16. K&R(nt)

[Clara T]

17. kick for truth

[hedgehog]

19. "How comes the refugee families could be tracked and reunited

across war torn Europe in 1946 and we can't find Americans in 2006?" Sounds like a campaign sound bite to me.

[suffragette]

20. More secrets (the list) and more lies (the number of missing/dead)

It's disgusting how the very entities that wish to constantly intrude upon our privacy invoke privacy as an excuse not to organize an effective way to find the missing and/or identify how many died.

I agree with you, Maddy. We will never know and I have to believe it's because they don't want us to know.