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Here's one, about just one county, where authorities expect fatalities in the "hundreds."

GULFPORT, MISS. - Stunned residents emerged from shelters and homes Tuesday to start assessing the massive damage left by Hurricane Katrina as rescuers pulled bodies from crushed homes and apartments near the coast.

The death toll in this hard-hit county rose to more than 100, but officials believe that number will rise. "There's so much rubble, we won't know for a while. But I fully expect the number to be in the hundreds," said Jason Green, assistant to the Harrison County coroner.

In an auxiliary morgue downtown, hearses unloaded bodies uncovered by search-and-rescue teams.

"Several families have brought in their dead," Green said.

County Supervisor Connie Rockco said it appears the heaviest loss of life was in east Biloxi, where an apartment building collapsed and killed 30 people.

"But there are fatalities from one end of the county to the other," Rockco said. - Houston Chronicle

The death toll in this hard-hit county rose to more than 100, but officials believe that number will rise. "There's so much rubble, we won't know for a while. But I fully expect the number to be in the hundreds," said Jason Green, assistant to the Harrison County coroner.

The numbers are indeed certain to rise, certainly into the hundreds, perhaps more than a thousand.

But you may notice there's no reason to believe that this assistant to the coroner would now, 12 hours later, be unaware of the thousands of dead in the killer trees or the entire families who neatly stacked themselves up in groups on the beach. You would think that our intrepid anonymous rescuer might have phoned the coroner's office with a body count or to verify where to put the dead bodies, wouldn't you?