How much longer will the official NOLA death toll climb?

[expatriot]

Yesterday, it rose to 1,021 from 1,003 on Friday from 988 on Thursday.
The totals for other states haven't changed much, making the total toll more than 1,260.

It has been over 6 weeks since the storm and we are still COUNTING the dead? We are not even talking about IDENTIFICATION.

[lazarus]

1. that's the key

they're not counting corpses, they're counting identified corpses.

[expatriot]

3. really? I thought they were counting "processed" corpses.

[liberal N proud]

2. Till someone is looking the other way and they simply start pushing

the buildings in with out searching for bodies.

[expatriot]

8. in this case, the foot dragging definitely helps them politically.

a few weeks ago, a co-worker was reading the paper and made the comment "so only 400 people ended up dying in New Orleans." I quickly pointed out that the body count was still in the early stages but still - with headlines like that it took the edge off of the whole disasterous response. If the headline would have been "Death toll exceed 1,000" a few weeks ago, my coworker's response may have been much different.

[MnFats]

4. I've been thinking many bodies were simply swept out to sea..

...if i'm way wrong, correct me but storm surges of 15 to 25 feet or more would haul everything including bodies on its way back out....i'm just a landlocked observer, though.

[jobycom]

10. Not in New Orleans

There were probably some washed out to sea in Mississippi, but New Orleans isn't open to the sea like that. Water rushed into the first levee breach, but it equalized once the water level reached the same height as the Canal and lake, so there was no backwash, as there was in Mississippi. There could have been some bodies washed through the levee breach back into the canal and lake, I'm guessing, but the water didn't fall fast enough to create a strong backwash.

In Mississippi they are finding cars and parts of houses on the offshore islands, so it's likely there were people swept to sea and not recovered. Last I heard, there were still 101 people missing.

After Camille, there were about forty people who were never found. Some were probably washed away. Others may have wandered off or moved away, and never knew they were classified as missing. In New Orleans, it will be harder to get an accurate count on the missing for a long time, if ever.

[porphyrian]

5. It can only climb if bodies are counted.

It's a morbid and disgusting thought, but how many bodies have already been consumed by the wildlife? How many have washed out to sea? How many are trapped in buildings that are still under water or feet of muck that may just be bulldozed rather than investigated? How much of the bayou is going to be combed for bodies? I'm guessing that the real numbers are closer to ten times what they've reported.

[Angry Girl]

18. They will NEVER let the real number be known. And the numbers

they are declaring will rise so slooooowly over the next mooooonths that nobody will notice and by then it'll be too late and some other horrific scandal will be occupying the headlines.

Besides, like you said, decomposition will take place rapidly with the water and critters. Easy as pie to cover up!

[porphyrian]

19. We can't even count on them being missed by family.

It's not uncommon in the South for families to live close to each other, especially in poor communities. In some cases, the entire family may be dead in an area that's still flooded.

I bet the government will acknowledge them when they stop paying taxes.
:eyes:

[Xithras]

6. Attics

It's one thing to walk through a building and see if there are any obvious bodies laying around. It's another, much slower, process to revisit those houses and thorougly search the attics and flip over furniture to find bodies that may be concealed.

It's likely that they'll be turning up bodies or skeletons for at least the next few months.

[expatriot]

11. And Kenyon Disaster Management doing forensics on these

recovered skeletons and classifying them as "canine remains."

[meganmonkey]

7. And what were 30,000 or whatever body bags for?

And why are there still tens of thousands of people missing as listed on websites?

I wonder if we'll ever really know...

:(

[expatriot]

9. getting a firm number on how many are still missing is key.

the number of how many are still listed on websites is of course unreliable as anyone who has spent more than 3 hours surfing on the internet should realize. (i.e. people who found eachother offline and never bothered to delist their names, double posts, etc.) We need a firm number of how many people are still missing. This will not account for all the shut-ins, loners, transients, etc.

[jobycom]

15. They always order more bodybags than necessary, especially when bodies

are supposed to be in bad shape. They ordered 25,000, but I think they were expecting a few thousand. Keep in mind that if they find a body part, it gets its own bag. Plus, they send crews out with body bags to do recovery, they don't send a bag out only after finding a body. So they need more bags, so every crew will have enough.

As for the missing, the other reply was right. People searching for loved ones post everywhere they can, and often several family members and friends will post the same missing person search. I was listening to WWL a few nights after the hurricane, and they were allowing people to call in searching for missing people. One guy's name was reported about five times, by different family members. Eventually a friend of his called in and said he was safe. (Yes, it was an emotional moment, btw.).

I haven't seen a good count of the missing yet. Maybe someone else has.

[leftofthedial]

12. they found 100 bodies yesterday afternoo, raising the official death toll

from 1019 to 1021.

It's a phony number anyway.

[CrispyQ]

13. The 'official' body count will not come close to 9/11.

They estimated 300,000 people missing. If even 1% of those are dead, that's 3,000. It's more likely that 5% or more would be dead. And like meganmonkey above said, what were the 30,000 body bags for?

Fortunately for this administration, Americans have short attention spans & are not good with numbers, especially percentages.

[moobu2]

14. This man a friend of mine knows very well

died yesterday from a Katrina related injury. I dont know if they'll include his death in the total or not.

It’s very weird how he died too.

What happened was…While he and his children and grandchildren were cleaning up debris, he saw a bottle of Gatorade laying next to where they were all gathering and they happened to be drinking Gatorade for refreshments. He picked Gatorade bottle up and put it with the other drinks, thinking that that one Gatorade drink was just one that had fallen onto the ground. After they were finished for the day, he gathered all the leftover drinks up and put them in the fridge. Some days later he woke up thirsty in the middle of the night and drank that Gatorade drink, but it wasn’t Gatorade…It was some sort of pesticide.

Evidently someone had used the Gatorade container to store pesticide in, anyway, the guy lingered all this time and finally passed away yesterday. His funeral is tomorrow.

[expatriot]

16. that is so sad.

it doesn't sound right to use this word when dealing with death but it is so bizarre, so tragic. Was he a local or out of area volunteer?

[moobu2]

17. He was a long time resident of the area.

My friend knew him for 25+ years and said he was a very nice man.
He was just cleaning up his own property which is located near the Mobile Bay.

His place was very messed up and a lot of his family came over to help out and it was just an accident in all the confusion I guess.

[Zeebo]

20. kick eom