1300 DEAD. Is Katrina the Worst Loss of Life in Modern American History?

[Stephanie]

Excluding 9/11, has there ever been a greater disaster on American soil in modern times? I find it shocking that this death toll is being glossed over. That bodies are still being recovered. That search and rescue in NOLA was suspended for months due to lack of funds!

I live in NYC, and those killed on 9/11 have been memorialized and honored. Articles about each one were published in the Times. A museum is being built downtown in their memory. Every September there is a ceremony for them.

Why are Katrina victims hidden away? 1300 DEAD! It's beyond shocking.

Is this the worst loss of life in modern American history, excluding 9/11?

http://www.gulf-times.com/site/topics/article.asp?cu_no=2&item_no=75927&version=1&template_id=43&parent_id=19

Dead still being found in storm-hit New Orleans
Published: Wednesday, 8 March, 2006, 11:29 AM Doha Time

NEW ORLEANS: Six months after Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans, bodies are still being pulled out of wrecked and rotting homes.
Firefighters in hard hats with cadaver dogs found the latest victim on Monday in a house that had been inspected months ago, though clearly not well enough.

It was the second corpse found since recovery efforts resumed last Friday, said Steve Glynn, chief of special operations for the New Orleans Fire Department.

The race and gender of the body located Monday found in the black Lower Ninth Ward, could not be determined, Glynn said.

“I don’t want to be too graphic,” Glynn said. “But it was confusing at first.”

The official door-to-door search of New Orleans ended October 3 with a death toll of 972. Since then, at least 131 more bodies have been found. Some by officials, some by horror-struck friends and family members, some even by insurance inspectors.

Firefighters continued to search homes for a few more months, but had to stop in December when their funding ran out.

Meanwhile, state officials continued to slog through the thousands of reports of missing people. They have now culled the list down to 1,900 people who disappeared amid the chaos of a mass evacuation following the vast August 29 storm.

They believe about 400 of those are probably dead. Many of those bodies could have been washed away in the storm, but officials have sent a list of names and last known addresses to recovery workers in hopes of recovering as many bodies as possible.

[formerrepuke]

1. The Galveston hurricane of 1900 took (a minimum of) 6,000 people

...this, of course, does not various civil war battles... It depends on what one considers 'modern', however.

[Stephanie]

5. I guess I wouldn't consider that "modern times"

I don't know how they would have evacuated those poor souls at that time, or predicted the storm in advance the way Katrina was predicted.

[redwitch]

2. No, The Galveston flood was much worse.

If you have a chance read "Isaac's Storm". Incredible read about the flood and the beginnings of the National Weather Service.

[bigscott]

3. i thought the galveston death toll was 8000-10000

[jobycom]

10. I used to hear 6000, the last few years I've been hearing 8000. Without

knowing for sure, I'd guess that historians have revised estimates after further research, although maybe the estimates vary depending on sources and formulas use.

Just guessing. The number seems to wander.

[RaleighNCDUer]

32. I believe the difference is that hundreds of blacks were not counted

in the original estimates.

Kind of like with Katrina.

[Sequoia]

48. Not to mention those that lived in the swamps.

I thought about those people first thing, they were the first to get wiped out. What is wrong with our nation?! We help others before we help our own.

[Stephanie]

7. Okay I'm going to revise my post, because that is too early

Too early. No mass communication, no modern weather prediction, no jet planes, greyhound buses, i.e., no means of escape.

[Spider Jerusalem]

14. No mass communication?

There were telephones and telegraphs in 1900, along with newspapers. There were railroads. The era is generally considered "modern" for all practical purposes. And even though meteorology wasn't as advanced as it is today, with satellite tracking and so on, it's STILL far from an exact science, with predictions of storm behaviour still not always matching subsequent observation.

[Stephanie]

16. no radio, no television, rural homes not likely to have phones

There is no EXCUSE for what happened on the Gulf Coast. Most likely there was no chance to save those Galveston victims, but the NOLA victims could have been saved and we all knew it.

[pitohui]

19. 1900 life expectancy around early to mid 40s

that is not modern era by the original poster's definition

modern era by many people's definition would most likely be post world-war 2 era

but to compare apples to apples, we would need to compare only disasters that occurred in the era since we got good satellite weather coverage so say the 1960s onward is what i would call a fair comparison

[Stephanie]

21. post WWII works for me

and I accept Pearl Harbor as a comparison. but think how that loss changed public consciousness, and history! no comparison to the INVISIBILITY of Katrina victims.

[Spider Jerusalem]

28. Only thanks to higher rates of infant and childhood mortality.

Widespread vaccination and antibiotics changed that, but someone in 1900 who survived childhood could reasonably expect to live into their sixties.

And I was a history major, so I think of the "modern era" in terms of the Enlightenment (mid-1700's) and later.

[Stephanie]

35. well I'm not a history major so I shd have better defined it

post-War, let's say.

[AnneD]

44. Funny thing...

there was a meteorologist at Galveston and he did warn people to get out (I think he sent his family out if I remember), but he was killed-still trying to get folks to evacuate. Once the storm hit there was NO communication for a while. I think they used hand cars from the RR to get to the closest town (Galveston is an island-we call them barrier islands). I am not sure how good the roads were-I think there was debris etc.
They had martial law and every available man was given a shovel and put on corpse detail or patrol. Guns and booze were rounded up and only those on corpse detail were allowed to drink. Looters were shot on site PERIOD.

[AnneD]

43. I use to frequent Galveston years ago and would hang out with the locals..

I met this most interesting old timer. He fished a lot (as I did) and one morning over coffee I noticed matching scars on his hands. I asked him about them. Seems he was a youngster when the Great Storm hit. His dad took him up onto the roof of their house. The wind was blowing and the water from the surge was rising. His dad nailed this guy's hands to the strongest beam on the roof. His dad pounded some holes in and tried to hold on. The old timer survived, his dad did not. He told me about the days afterward. It was so much like NOLA. There is a book about it. I think the title is a Day in September or something like that. I read it once, very compelling.

[Sequoia]

47. "Issac's Storm" is another one and very good.

[meegbear]

4. Over 6000 were killed in the Galveston flood of 1900

http://www.1900storm.com/

I guess the question is what is "modern" history?

[rocktivity]

6. Don't be so quick to exclude 9/11

There are still at least that many people who are unaccounted for, whose bodies may have washed out to sea or worse. Bush's biggest fear is that Katrina's death toll will eclipse 9/11's, so don't be surprised if we don't get an official death toll until after he leaves office.

:headbang:
rocknation

[jobycom]

8. BushCo gets no mileage memorializing the Katrina victims

With 9-11 BushCo just grabbed its wide brush and painted all Muslims as enemies so he could invade who he wanted and do away with pesky civil liberties.

With Katrina, he can't invade anyone and every time the death toll is brought up, all thinking people blame him for a portion of that toll.

He didn't give a damn about the people in the World Trade Center, either, but he could get political mileage out of pretending he did.

[_testify_]

40. Spot on. n/t

[Spider Jerusalem]

9. In addition to what was noted above...

there were over 2300 killed at Pearl Harbor. And an estimated 3000-6000 killed in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.

[redwitch]

11. I think the real total of dead from Katrina is being glossed over.

And more shocking than the number of dead is the stunning indifference of many govt officials to the plight of the poor. And the gullibility of the American people who hear the hollow promises of those officials and nod their heads in agreement every time, and then they all forget about it like it never happened. Bush promised to rebuild New Orleans better than ever- but won't fight for funding the levee rebuilding. Hasn't made sure that the displace, devastated people even have electricity in their lousy trailers. Or even have the trailers. No one is accountable ever.

[jobycom]

31. Did you see MSNBC.com's story on the casinos in Mississippi?

They were touting the revival and return of the Gulf Coast, bragging about how all of the federal, insurance and private money flooding in has led to an economic boom that is flooding the casinos with cash.

They kind of leave off that most people aren't getting the money, and that only a third of the casinos have reopened, so even if the customer base has shrunk by half they would still be doing better business than before.

There is progress, but the story shouldn't be how much everything has recovered but how many people are still being ignored, how many financial obligations by insurance companies are being shirked, how many BushCo promises have been broken, etc. Tell us the good news, but don't act like that's the essence of the story.

As for the total dead, no one has any idea right now. All we have from New Orleans and southern Louisiana are body counts, and they are estimating there may be several hundred bodies still in the wreckage (so glad SCI was diligent in their recovery efforts). These don't include any "missing" who might be dead. They have "missing" lists, but they are lists of people being looked for by someone, not necessarily people who are really missing, so we have no idea how many of them might be dead. And then there are the increased numbers of suicides and stress related deaths over the last seven months that aren't included in the totals. The numbers in Mississippi are closer to accurate, but mainly because there were fewer casualties, the destruction was concentrated in a more searchable area, and there wasn't such a diaspora of evacuees.

Just my observations. I have no inside knowledge other than gossip of friends and family in the area and my close study of this as it's been happening.

[pitohui]

41. that story sounds awfully slanted

the federal gov't specifically removed any funding for aid to casinos and their employees in the recovery plan, the casinos get NOTHING

most casinos have had to scramble to provide their own fund-raisers and aid for their employees, i know harrah's entertainment has done a lot, concert w. elton john and all that, but this is not a matter of any tax or insurance dollars, it is a matter of if you want to contribute you can contribute to their fund or you can buy a ticket to the concert or what have you

most of the casinos are completely destroyed and some time away before they can re-open, the few that are open are being flooded w. cash because they have significantly less competition, mississippi gulf coast was a free market and competition was lively, at the moment i think the only ones open are imperial palace, new palace, and isle of capri

[Tesha]

12. Here's a handy reference to recent American climate-based disasters...

http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories/images/usafactsheet.pdf.

Tesha

[Dhalgren]

13. And that "1300" could turn out to be 3200+ if the "missing" never

turn up - one way or the other. So couple Katrina with 9/11 and Bush is not just a "disaster of a President", but THE "Disaster President"...

[MadMaddie]

15. The Johnstown Flood was another huge man made disaster.....1889

was one of the most catastrophic man made disasters-A shoddy dam gave way an destroyed several towns..

http://www.jaha.org/FloodMuseum/history.html


<snip>
On May 31, 1889, a neglected dam and a phenomenal storm led to a catastrophe in which 2,209 people died. It's a story of great tragedy, but also of triumphant recovery. Visit the Johnstown Flood Museum, which is operated by the Johnstown Area Heritage Association, to find out more about this shocking episode in American history.
<snip>

[Stephanie]

17. Do you think there will be a Katrina museum?

I sort of doubt it. These deaths are being swept under the rug.

[MadMaddie]

23. The death toll...will leak out eventually.....

I think that there will be museum only because politicians will see it as money making venue.

If the Dems get back in power I suspect that the real investigation will begin. and the truth will come out...This is my hope.

[stellanoir]

18. They are so lying about these numbers

I just know they are.

Given what the Kenyon Corp did during the floods in Texas and the "funeralgate" that followed coupled with the fact they settled implies explicit guilt and disrespect for human life. Factor in the untraceable illegal immigrants and I've an unsettling feeling that there were well over 10,000 fatalities but they'll never report anyh more than 3000.

They can never have government incompetance appear far worse than the terrorists ya know?

"Wouldn't be prudent."

[pitohui]

26. well they're rather boldly not adding up the numbers

the evacuated who died of their injuries and exposures in another state are not being added to that list, around 70 evacuees died of exposure at the ASTROdome in houston alone

some states won't even provide louisiana a list of katrina related deaths at all, for instance, georgia says they don't keep such records, yet many evacuees went to atlanta and other georgia destinations, if they died there of their injures or exposure or dehydration they are just put down as dying of old age (most who die are elderly)

harry lee of jefferson parish with a stroke of a pen removed 100 jefferson parish dead from the katrina toll, claiming these were all elderly who died just before the storm, aug 28 must have been a hell of a day for old people to shuffle off this mortal coil in jefferson parish

so even BEFORE you try to track down the missing, you have hundreds if not a thousand or more of known dead who are not classified as katrina dead

i've heard cataldie believes there are around 300-400 almost certainly dead and not yet found in 9th ward and lakeview, based on family reports of those who last saw their family member there, i have heard that there are similar numbers around 300 for the mississippi gulf coast of missing persons reported by family members who last saw or got a phone call from their loved from the coast, for instance, a lady reports getting a phone call that her relative was about to leave beau rivage, this relative is never seen again, if you have seen what remains of beau rivage casino, you will know that woman's remains were destroyed by storm surge and washed away

at some point it is going to have to be acknowledged that if elderly people never show up to collect their social again and if working people are never on record as working in a job again, they were washed away, and the families need to get closure, get their insurance, get a memorial or some sort of recognition

it took years to put together a camille memorial, this could be a huge task and one that i believe will also take many years

you even hear occasionally of a name that must be added to the vietnam memorial and how long has it been since the vietnam war

[soothsayer]

20. Am I the only one who thinks that the 9/11 death toll was actually

pretty low (thankfully) and that we have made a disproportionately big deal about it. Don't get me wrong, the loss of one life is too much, very sad for the families and friends and the nation, very awful, extreeeeeemely and extraordinarily tragic and of course scary, but in the long run, not really all that big a number.

[Stephanie]

24. it was the sheer, sudden horror of how they died.

And all at once, in flames, or crushed alive. No, we do not make too big a deal about it. The number is huge. The loss was enormous. The horror magnifies it. Not too big a deal. It's a huge deal.

[Catherine Vincent]

29. And actually seeing video of some of the people jumping to their deaths.

:-(

[pitohui]

33. yes, you are right, it is a huge huge deal no doubt abt it

no, i DON'T believe too big a deal was made of 911 dead, i agree w. stephanie on this

however, the clearcut contrast w. how we react when yankees are killed out of the blue and how we react when southerners are killed makes it v. uncomfortable to me

the federal gov't simply refused to provide in timely fashion for recovery of our dead, and when the state, one of the poorest states went broke and had to cease body recovering, look how long the feds waited to start pitching in -- and now they are walking away having hardly done anything because of a dispute with double tree hotel? hell, if they had just put out a call asking for a place to stay, i bet they'd have tons of people volunteering to put them up

i can't honestly call it race hate, my three friends who died were white and well-to-do, and you are going to find many of the elderly killed in lakeview were white and well-to-do, this storm did not discriminate based on race or class

it just seems to me in the end that media puts a higher value on the life of a yankee even today and it's most frustrating, to hear the media coverage sometimes you would think all we provide are tabasco, titty bars, and jazz funerals, we are not here to be a colorful footnote to the "real" people of the nation, we ARE the real people of the nation, where would you be without our oil and gas, without our port, without our refineries?

well it's most frustrating to think that if you work hard and do something useful than you are considered to be of less value than the man who pushes paper for a financial institution

my proposal is that we honor and account for ALL of our dead, how hard is that?

per poster bosshog's favorite quote -- FEMA could screw up a one car funeral

[Stephanie]

38. precisely

that's exactly my point - I don't know if it is that they are southerners per se, but the deaths are being swept under the rug, the indifference is just astounding to me, I can't explain so I guess your southern vs. yankee explanation is as good as any.

[RaleighNCDUer]

36. Yes and no.

The same number of people die is a typical month in car accidents. A single storm in the gulf killed as many, and possibly more, as 9/11.

OTOH, 9/11 was completely preventable. Someone made the decision to not prevent it. Just like someone made the decision not to help after Katrina.

I think we know who.

[Stephanie]

39. they made the decision not to help BEFORE Katrina

they did nothing.

[Xithras]

45. In many ways, we got incredibly lucky on 9/11

Had they hit a little later in the day, the numbers would have been far higher. Had the jets hit lower in the buildings, the numnber would have been far higher. If they hadn't left such a large gap between the first and second impacts, giving people in the second tower time to evacuate, the number would have been far higher.

There have been several references over the years that if the terrorists had planned their attack a little better, the WTC death toll could have easily exceeded 10,000.

[soothsayer]

22. 2,471 killed at pearl harbor

[Xithras]

46. Military conflicts don't count.

If you want to include military conflicts in the death toll, Pearl Harbor is pretty low on the body count scale. Heck, there were almost 26,000 killed in Iwo Jima alone.

[Stephanie]

49. well I said American soil so Iwo Jima definitely doesn't count

Comparing Pearl Harbor seems fair, though. Just look at how those killed were revered.

[rockymountaindem]

25. The sinking of the steamboat Sultana after the Civil War

took the lives of an estimated 1,700 people. That's more than the Titanic.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sultana_Disaster

[Catherine Vincent]

27. You ever notice when disaster happens and a multitude of deaths

occur, they always over predict the amount of deaths....except for the Katrina diaster, that is. That is one disaster we may never find out the true number of deaths. But I think we all knew it's probably more than 3,000.

[formerrepuke]

30. Post WWII: Texas City, TX 1947..dock explosion kills approx 581.

..worst industrial accident in US history....I think

[KyuzoGator]

34. 1300 dead, 1700+ "missing"...total is more than 9/11.

I started a thread about this last week...when do these "missing" people get declared dead? More people died from the ineptitude of the Katrina preparation/response than from 9/11.

[hfojvt]

37. It seems that "humanity" and its wars

are a much worse natural disaster.

Except what I left out, that the flu epidemic after WWI took more lives than all of WWI. I do not want to mimize either Katrina or 9-11. The loss of even one life is a huge tragedy to those who love him/her and the destruction caused by Katrina is staggering, but so was the destruction of wars and the destruction of auto accidents. Even if Katrina's toll is 20,000 that is only half a year of auto accidents and 1/30th of heart disease.

"September 11 is being hyped by the media, as 'the day that changed America', is being used by the current administration as a justification for attacking Afghanistan, Iraq, North Korea, und there is talk of Saudi Arabia.
I do not want to minimise the death und destruction that took place on Sept. 11, but the government und the media seem determined to make it bigger than it is. They say: "America has been attacked und now America is at war." Compare the loss of 9-11 to an actual war. World War I, for example, cost 116,708 American lives, not to mention the devastation it caused to Germany, Austria, France, Great Britain, und Russia. That devastation was one of the chief causes of WWII which cost 407,316 American deaths, und over 40,000,000 deaths world-wide.
Before 9-11 is escalated into some kind of world-wide conflict between America und evil, or America und Islam, Americans should think about those numbers. How does the destruction of 9-11 compare to the destruction America subsequently caused in Afghanistan, or the destruction we previously caused in Iraq? Can we honestly say that the death und destruction we cause is justified, whereas that done to us is evil? Can we honestly call it "defense" to attack Iraq because they "might" pose a threat to us in the future? Since we are openly talking about attacking Iraq, wouldn't it be self-defense if they were to attack us?
To date, 9-11 is the only 'successful' terror attack we have seen on America, in America, for as long as I can remember. In the year following, there have been no other attacks (although fellow Americans continue to phone in false threats).
However, in the year following 9-11, there have been over 20,000 homicides in America, if this has been an average year. In the year 2000, U.S. residents age 12 or older experienced about 25.9 million crimes. 19 million were property crimes, 6.3 million were crimes of violence. There were about 250,000 rapes. Thus in an average year, 6.3 million Americans are terrorised by their fellow Americans. There is a war on terror for you.
99,860 people died in accidents in 1999, over 40,000 in automobile accidents. Maybe we should bomb Detroit, since that is at least eight times worse than what Al-quaida did in a year. 29,199 people killed themself in 1999, und HIV was a big killer, taking 14,802. In the same year, 3,823 people under 55 died of the flu or pneumonia, as did 59,907 people over 55. That is dwarfed by the over 600,000 who died of heart disease.
The health data is from NCHS, und it demonstrates that an ordinary year of homicide, accident, und disease are much worse enemies than any terrorists have managed so far. There are much better ways to spend billions of dollars than by using weapons of mass destruction on people who are so evil that they are trying to develop weapons of mass destruction.
As Edward Bellamy wrote: " ... who are the public enemies? Are they France, England, Germany, or hunger, cold, und nakedness? In your day governments were accustomed, on the slightest international misunderstanding, to seize upon the bodies of citizens und deliver them over by hundreds of thousands to death und mutilation, wasting their treasures the while like water; und all this oftenest for no imaginable profit to the victims."
Those who beat the drums of war against terror, are not looking at the enemies of humanity. Since war is terror, they are also like a fireman who shows up at a house fire with a flame-thrower. The war mongers eager to use violence against those they dislike are just like the terrorists they are claiming to fight - an enemy of peace, und of humanity."

[RebelOne]

42. 2,500 were killed in South Florida in a 1928 hurricane

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1928_Okeechobee_Hurricane

[Swamp Rat]

50. The real number is probably higher.

Will our dead ever be counted?

[Stephanie]

51. I'd really like to know

and I know I keep saying it, but it's SHOCKING that these deaths are ignored. What's the reason? What do you think, SR?