Mystery over true death toll in Mississippi

[Watchmaker]

The official death toll in Mississippi stands at 218. Considering 60,000 homes in Mississippi were completely destroyed (ie. nothing left whatsoever) and a further 100,000 were likely damged beyond repair, with towns such as Waveland and Bay St. Louis wiped off the map, this seems like an incredibly low number of deaths.

Anecdotal reports from 3 weeks ago give much, much higher numbers of collected bodies:

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http://www.moberlymonitor.com/articles/2005/09/06/news/news1.txt
Davis said Gator has been busy rescuing as many people as he can; when she spoke to him last, he had taken over 50 people into his home to give them food and shelter. He has pulled almost that many dead bodies out of the water and taken them to I-90, where he told Davis there were about 800 corpses lined up along the road for rescue workers to retrieve.

http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7000069092
But those numbers are considered low by law enforcement and medical rescue squads. One law enforcement officer estimates it is more likely to be between 600 and 800 Bay St.Louis alone. The residents are “in for a shock,” he tells the Washington Post.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1473894/posts?page=2690

http://www.sunherald.com/mld/sunherald/news/nation/12575557.htm
With the search-team's tales of horrendous findings and the official death toll not matching up, rumors in this disconnected part of the world seem to be spiraling out of control.

A Florida EMA official, brought in to handle media in Hancock, told the Sun Herald the county would not release "any more numbers" until the coroners complete their collecting process.

Several armed guards stand near the front gate of the old Alcan Cable site in Bay St. Louis, where five, 53-foot, refrigerated tractor-trailers sit behind a chain-linked fence.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1480391/posts?q=1&&page=101#114

a dear friend (who is a doc in Biloxi/Gulf Port)finally called me to let me know that he was alive, said that they had found (I believe it was this morning)a shelter about 1/4 from the beach that housed 800. All 800 were found to have drown. Sad, Sad, Sad. I was relieved to hear his voice, but feel bad for what he has seen. He happened to be in the ER when the hurricane hit. All at the hospital were saved,PTL. He did, however, loose his home and all earthly possessions. He said the AFB is obliterated.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1476540/posts?q=1&&page=51#70
The death toll in Miss is in the thousands. I have now spoken to at-least 4 people who have worked down there during recovery.If you did the math between the 4 of them you would be over 1,500 alone as far as tagging bodies is concerned.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1473894/posts?page=2690#2674
My wife works part-time for an answering company. One of their clients is a funeral home up here in Upstate New York has a couple of its employees down in Biloxi as volunteers. Anyways, one of the employees called in from Biloxi - via the answering service - to let their employer know of their status. She said that they were "processing 300+ bodies per day" in Biloxi alone...

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Also, it seems the only person allowed to give death toll figures in Mississippi is Coroner Gary Hargrove who has been making very defensive statements to the local press:

http://www.sunherald.com/mld/sunherald/news/special_packages/hurricane_katrina/communities/biloxi/12567449.htm

"There is no reason for me to deceive the public or the news media because that's not going to help the situation either," Coroner Gary Hargrove said. "Because if we start reporting low numbers and keep them low and then all of a sudden, 'bam,' we walk in and put high numbers on it, then you've created another problem. You've created deception."

This very early story is kind of strange:

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http://www.dfw.com/mld/kentucky/news/special_packages/iraq/11547092/12526471.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp

GULFPORT, MISS. - Harrison County officials said Wednesday that figures they provided Tuesday on storm-related fatalities were too high.

In his second official day on the job Tuesday as the county's emergency management director, Joe Spraggins said he wasn't "100 percent certain" but that the number fatalities was "100 plus."

On Wednesday, however, he backtracked.

"There were figures given out that were wrong," Spraggins said. "Now we're going to give you facts."

A new policy makes Harrison County Coroner Gary Hargrove the only person who can answer questions about the process of retrieving dead bodies. A Federal Emergency Management Agency team was setting up a portable morgue at Riemann's Funeral Home in downtown Gulfport, but officials there would not answer questions about the nature of equipment being brought in.

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Note the story doesn't say what the early body count was, just that was "wrong".

So what's really going on here? What is the actual policy on releasing the body count?

This quote partly explains it:

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http://www.dfw.com/mld/kentucky/news/special_packages/iraq/11547092/12526471.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp
In Mississippi, the coroner or a deputy coroner must examine a body and determine a cause of death. But Hargrove only has a couple of assistants. Cornoers in Harrison, Hancock and Jackson Counties, and probably in Pearl River County, are combining efforts to deal with the dead, said Hargrove.

"We are not releasing information on the deceased at this time," he said, refusing to explain the reason for the delay.

The scope of the body retrieval effort is obviously straining capabilities here.

"We learned right away that we were using up our local resources," said Hargrove, referring to gloves and other disposable items used in working with the dead.
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So does that mean Hargrove could have 3,000 bodies in his morgue but is only willing to state that 218 are dead because only 218 have been examined/identified by his assisstants.

Finally, the idea that gloves and disposable items were a limiting factor in the processing of 218 bodies doesn't sound right.

Bottom line: Are there actually thousands of bodies in Mississippi and this news is being seriously understated?