80K-100K Dead in New Orleans? Stunning quote on CNN

[WherestheOutrage]

This is a snip from the transcript of Today's Situation Room:

BLITZER: You heard the mayor, Ray Nagin, say just a little while ago that hundreds, perhaps thousands of people are dead. Is that the kind of information you are getting as well?

HEERDEN (IVOR VAN HEERDEN, LSU HURRICANE CTR): Yes. That's what we're hearing. And I want to point out that the estimate is that 80 percent of the people evacuated New Orleans. That means approximately 250,000 to 300,000 stayed behind. Now our initial computer models are telling us that maybe as much as a third of those have drowned.

[iamjoy]

1. Holy Cow

:wow:

I thought comparisons to the Asian tsunami were exagerations.

I am not ready to give up hope yet. At first, they thought the death toll from 9-11 would be tens of thousands based on 50,000 working in the building and the fact that it took four hours to evacuate the building in 1993.

[never_get_over_it]

20. I rememer that

and they thought the Pentagon numbers would be much higher. I remember being relieved it wasn't as bad as expected - but I have a bad feeling this is at least going to top the 9-11 numbers - I hope I am VERY wrong.

[tjdee]

2. And some of them are dying because they're left with NO HELP.

I would like to have a look at that overpass tomorrow, for example.

[aquart]

3. Sounds high. I hope.

Nagin isn't ready to go that far. And Heerden is just theorizing.

But we have to start picking up those bodies.

[bluestateguy]

4. I'm cautiously optimistic that it's not that high

becuase I just can't bring myself to believe that we would have a catastrophe that deadly. If that makes me naive, so be it.

[WherestheOutrage]

8. There's the old saying...

Hope for the best and expect the worst. That simply doesn't apply when the worst is unfathomable. I can't get my head around it either, but I remember being numb when the numbers rolled in from the tsunami.

I can only hope for the best.

[BattyDem]

5. Stuck in the water for 3 days while BushCo did nothing ...

I wouldn't be a bit surprised if the number was that high! :cry: :grr: :cry:

[Oilwellian]

6. I suspect it's true

I've been experiencing severe anxiety today because I believe there are several thousand people who have drowned in this disaster. Not just in New Orleans but in outlying towns like Slidell with a population of 250,000. And Mississippi will also show a staggering number of dead. We will hear a lot about the "surge" that hit after the storm passed, and it is that that killed so many people.

[muwriter]

7. Ratio may be right. Number probably too high

[Guaranteed]

11. I give humans a slightly larger survivability factor,

but if 300,000 stayed behind, 10's of thousands are dead.

[katamaran]

9. The first estimates from the tsunami were around 1K-5K

We had a really macabre little pool at work to guess the number dead after the tsunami. The highest anyone guessed was 50K.

We also had one for the election. Everyone thought Kerry would win :-(

Then we had one for the Michael Jackson case. Four of nine people bet he would get off.

<shakes head>

[Jacobin]

10. doubt it

it'll be in the thousands though, especially in the two parishes south of new orleans

[applegrove]

12. That is monstrous. Just monstrous.

[Warren Stupidity]

13. Numbers are way off

http://neworleans.areaconnect.com/statistics.htm
Population of New Orleans: 484,674
20% not evacuated: 96,934
1/3 of those dead: 32,311

Now 32,000 dead is a huge fucking disaster. However given that Heerden was so totally off on his 250-300,000 'stayed behind' it is difficult to expect that his estimate on the 1/3 dead is accurate either, computer model not withstanding.

However I am completely alarmed that there are essentially no estimates of the death toll. Your quote and the mayor's 'could be hundreds could be thousands' are about it. This is bullshit. :wtf: An entire city has been wiped out and they are now saying it may be uninhabitable for months!

[natrat]

add in surrounding towns and the number grows

[I_Make_Mistakes]

18. While truth is important

Please be careful. We have Duers (Swamprat, for one) who have not heard from their loved ones. If he reads this, it would totally freak him out.

[expatriate]

25. Thank you for reminding us of this.

I am also one of those DUers. My son, mentally ill and insulin dependent diabetic, is somewhere in New Orleans. I cannot get any information.

[expatriate]

24. That is the population of New Orleans only.

It is not that large. Add in Metairie, Kenner, New Orleans East, Gretna, River Ridge, Arabi and all the other "towns" that are part of the New Orleans metropolitan area and you have a much, much higher population. Many of these areas have high population density housing - miles of apartment buildings and townhouse developments.

When most officials refer to New Orleans, they mean the entire metro area, not New Orleans proper.

[Warren Stupidity]

27. Adjusted for Metropolitan Statistical Area

http://www.cityrating.com/citystats.asp?city=New+Orleans&state=LA

Population: 1,337,726
Stay Behinds: 267,545
1/3 dead: 89,181

So I stand corrected. The original quote makes sense for the metro region.

OK. I scared now.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

14. 60,000 possible dead on 9-11.

Let's hope to better that shitty prediction.

[Poiuyt]

15. How many will die in the coming months from disease caused by the

bacteria, sewage and rotting flesh in the water? Not a pleasant thought.

[pacifictiger]

16. sorta makes

9/11 look like child's play doesn't it. Sad, sad, sad.

[fob]

17. I am a bit suspicious that the "news" programs keep crawling the

'100 dead in Biloxi' constantly like they're pulling the old magicians trick of "look over here, no, don't look behind that curtain, just look over here".

[Igel]

19. Heerden's a dork.

There's going to be a certain number of people, 5 years from now, citing the fool as a credible eye-witness to "debunk" the official, much lower numbers.

Nagin didn't say, i.e., assert, that hundreds or thousands of people are dead. He *feared* that number were dead. One's knowledge; the other's emotion.

[natrat]

21. wow

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x4539500

[Mr_Spock]

Nah

That is just a really loose estimate.

[Mr_Spock]

22. Nah

That is just a really loose estimate.

[Silverhair]

23. Sounds realistic for a very rough guess.

Computer projections are only as good as the input, which in this case involves a LOT of guesswork.

However, when you consider that many of those people are entering their third day with no fresh water, and that thirst will push them to drink the flood water, then a very high death counts becomes realistic.

Many lives will be shortened as years from now, or even a couple of decades later, cancers start killing flood survivors who drank the water.

The true numbers will never be known.

[the_spectator]

26. Total bogosity!

Two reasons: first, NO itself has slightly UNDER 500,000 residents, by that calculation, 100,000 people stayed, not "250,000 - 300,000." The population of the outlying areas added to NO can't be over one million -- even so, there would be only 200,000 remaining, not "250,000 - 300,000."

Second, don't forget, the storm surge DIDN'T get this city! It has flooded slowly under sunny skies. Trying to calculate that ONE THIRD of the hardy, savvy, native New Orleanians who stayed behind have now "drowned" because the water has slowly crept up makes no sense, even if it was a "computer" what said it!

[Warren Stupidity]

28. Actually the numbers add up.

See my other posts. 1.3M in the metro region. If the estimate that 1/15 of that population has died is even close to accurate then that is a lot of dead people.

[chicagiana]

30. Tell that to all those people ...

... who were chopped out of their attics.

People go up to their attics because surely the water couldn't rise any higher. They really had no idea about their elevation with respects to Lake Ponchartrain.

Once disease hits, the numbers will go off the charts.

This will probably be in the order of 10-20,000 dead. All their waterlogged corpses are on Bush's hands for cutting of funding to the levee remediation and improvement.

[chicagiana]

29. It will be tens of thousands ...

They will be tearing lifeless people out of their attics for weeks.

When it comes to natural disasters, floods are by far the number 1 killers. People just don't respect the power of water and what it does when it's released from it's embankements.