[George W. Bush]

Bay St. Louis is largely destroyed. Same with Waveland. Same with Pass Christian.

Granted. But many of you assume relatively low evacuation rates. I see no reason to think so. Actually, I think the number of deaths on all sides is exaggerated as we've seen in many other news stories over the years (initial reporting on 9/11, AIDS deaths, etc.). By and large, the MSM and governments greatly exaggerate these things.

The upshot of all this, IMHO, is that you seem to be going out of your way to challenge the specifics of MFH's post, but acknowledge yourself, in a guess, that we could have 1500 dead. There is no more reporting to support that guess than there is to support a contention of 'thousands' being dead. But, nonetheless, you view it as a reasonable guess.

As I said plainly, it's a wild guess. Actually, I'll be surprised if the count hits 1,000.

[lugsoul]

I'm not assuming low evac rates at all. I'm assuming 80-90% evac rates, which would be historically high for a hurricane, except for those places where officials are stating otherwise, like Biloxi.

But even if you have 90% evac rates across the entire MS coastline - which we did not - there were a lot more than a couple of hundred people in those areas where we are seeing total devastation.