No registry, no comfort for Katrina families
http://www.sunherald.com/mld/sunherald/14021508.htmsnip
There is no national registry for missing people after a natural disaster and there are no plans to establish one in time for the coming hurricane season, according to government spokespeople.
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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.
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"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.
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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.
Any chance they'll have their shit together come hurricane season? Pathetic.