As I understand it, the term 'causualties' usually refers to victims, or injured, or a combined number of injured and dead. Are you talking about the cameraman on CNN? If so, I am pretty sure he was talking about persons needing to be rescued.
It refers to injured and dead combined; you're correct.
But in the popular media, virtually universally, it's mis-used to refer to dead only. This is a serious problem because emergency management agencies and the military do use the term correctly.