How can they know how many are dead yet when many of the missing might be out of town or staying with relatives?
From the article above:
Yes, there are people in those refrigerated trucks at the temporary morgue, but we're not prepared to say how many.
I am only wondering why they haven't told how many bodies they have so far. Usually they say that as they find them. The spokesman in the article called this a "mass casualty event." Fourteen dead or seventeen dead does not seem to me to be a mass casualty event.
I understand your point: it will take a long time to account for everyone, but as I have said, it just seems curious that there is a gag order on what's in the trucks.
It doesn't matter to me one way or the other, although I have been and still am praying for the people there. There is just something odd about what they are not saying.