The Search for Katrina's Victims Finds Some Missing by Choice

washingtonpost.com ^ | 03-24-06 | Ken Ringle

[Ellesu]

NEW ORLEANS -- By Louisiana's latest official count, 1,292 people are known to have died in the state because of Hurricane Katrina. About 1,280 -- the number changes daily -- remain missing. Hundreds of people were sucked into the Gulf of Mexico by Katrina's retreating tsunami-like storm surge and will never be found. But the state-run, federally funded Find Family National Call Center is discovering that hundreds of others have used the storm and the nationwide diaspora it triggered to escape a troubled or painful past. They do not want to be found. The center's 90 or so workers immerse themselves daily in tracking missing wives and fleeing felons, reburying exhumed coffins, prying unknowingly into the dark family secrets of confused parentage and dealing with the anonymous dead whom no one seems able -- or willing -- to claim.

[Richard Kimball]

This is also true of many "homeless." They have no permanent residence because they have felonies or other reasons they don't want to be found. I understand that after the WTC bombing, several people used it as a method to change identities. Of course, most of the WTC people were upper middle class, so they were less likely to go the homeless route, and more likely to go the new identity route.

[50sDad]

Can you imagine? It may be that this will be the greatest example of Urban Renewal ever produced...the scutterbugs have run from under the rock, and the city will be able to survive without them just fine. Ray Dagain should be THANKING Geroge Bush.

[rockrr]

"Hundreds of people were sucked into the Gulf of Mexico by Katrina's retreating tsunami-like storm surge and will never be found."

Barbara Streisand alert......