What is an accurate death toll from Katrina?

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

Will we ever know? How will we ever know? What is the official count? What is the unofficial count? They are STILL finding bodies.

[valerief]

1. Wasn't Kenyon hired to clean up, i.e., discard, bodies clogging

drains? I wonder how many were eaten by alligators or decomposed by toxins in the water.

[porphyrian]

2. Should we count before the long term effects are over anyway?

Depression, cancer, some rare disease from the bayou that washed inland, who knows when the death toll of Katrina can be accurately counted, especially since there are likely to be more hurricanes before it's all said and done?

[The Deacon]

3. An Accurate Count Is Probably Possible At This Point

There are four sets of remains unidentified in Mississippi (two were buried in Feburary, the other two will be buried on the anniversary) and 49 sets of remains unidentified in Louisiana. There are 18 missing (in Mississippi) for whom no remains have been found. Yhat brings the MS. total (official) to 231. Louisiana has 135 missing for whom no remains have been found. The official death toll is 1464 (almost all in New Orleans.)
So, 1695 deaths officially (the unidentified remains get counted) plus 153 officially missing (not counted in death toll.)

Rest In Peace, and may your passing be a light to the rest of us.

[pitohui]

5. that's an old link

the official death toll for louisiana alone is 1,577 -- they've found more since that number was published apparently

another thread had the more up to date figure but i can't find it now, maybe later

getting close to 2,000 total now

i believe the mississippi total to be way understated but i can't prove it and i hope i am wrong, but i can see where whole neighborhoods were vanished down to the slab, families in those houses if taken away by storm surge -- no one would be left to report them missing

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

12. What link?

:shrug:


It was the worst natural disaster to ever hit the US. Worse than Galveston.


P.S. Watch Louisiana "turn" red.

[lonestarnot]

13. I met a veteran for peace in the Veterans Day Parade in Phoenix

and she worked there under some rescue ops and said deaths were waaaaaaaaaaaay understated, and that we would never get the accurate count. Just more numbers I guess. :sarcasm:

[tjdee]

4. Mabus pointed me to Wikipedia last night, here's the link.

I agree with what's being said-- sfexpat says we should try to get an accurate number.

I agree.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=1956348&mesg_id=1957697

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

6. I was wondering the same thing tonight

as I watched Acts 3 and 4.

I am sure that is the reason FEMA is keeping everyone scattered.

It will never be possible until the people are back and can compare notes.

[azurnoir]

10. There is another reason IMHO

As long as the Katrina victims are scattered, the government can eff them around and they can not form any sort of coalition or speak out as a group.

[walkon]

7. Nothing accurate about it but

I'd guess 8-10,000. We'll never know. Another 3-5,000 in MS. We'll never know. How many in Iraq - we'll never know. 9-11: 2792 - Gotta know, gotta know.

[Amelie]

8. We'll Never Know

I've heard that we'll never have an accurate death count because, depending on the official cause of death, the person may not be considered part of the toll. For example, my brother-in-law pulled a grandfather and grand-daughter out of a house; the grandfather had been giving all food to the child for many days, and died minutes after getting into the rescue boat; "exhaustion" killed the old man, not the hurricane. A man on our block had a heart attack and drowned in the floodwaters; he died from a heart attack, not the hurricane.

Then there are the less obvious ones. My great-aunt, 84 years old, had lived on the same block since the 1920s. She was an invalid and would not have survived one week in post-Katrina New Orleans. She came with us and lived for three weeks at my mother's house, and then went to Florida to live with her nephew. I think the realization that she would never go home killed her. Katrina killed her, even though she died several months after Katrina.

A good friend of ours is in the National Guard, and he swears he saw thousands of bodies floating in the days after Katrina. There's no way we'll know how many lives Katrina claimed.

[LibraLiz1973]

9. Anyone who says less than 3-4 thousand

is lying- IMHO

[bdamomma]

11. we will never know how many people perished in that horrible

hurricane, and they are still finding bodies, it's a shame, almost a year now and nothing has been done, this government is playing with peoples' lives.