[reagan_fanatic]

I truely doubt that they will release the true death count. They'll do what they did down in Florida after Hurricane Charley hit. Initially, you heard eyewitnesses describe hundreds, even thousands of dead, and then the official count went down to 13 ending up around 25 people. I'm betting that the death count will be revised to a couple of hundred.

Would someone PLEASE explain to me why the gubmint would want to hide the number of dead due to a hurricane or other natural disaster? What is the motivation? What possible frickin benefit would the gubmint get out of fudging the numbers like that??? Everyone knows and expects when there is a natural disaster of this magnitude there will be a lot of dead and injured.

Geez, there must be a severe shortage of tinfoil around here.

[null and void]

Would someone PLEASE explain to me why the gubmint would want to hide the number of dead due to a hurricane or other natural disaster? What is the motivation? What possible frickin benefit would the gubmint get out of fudging the numbers like that??? Everyone knows and expects when there is a natural disaster of this magnitude there will be a lot of dead and injured.

Any government will routinely under report deaths in a disaster by a factor of ten.

I have no idea why.

[DJ MacWoW]

Would someone PLEASE explain to me why the gubmint would want to hide the number of dead due to a hurricane or other natural disaster?

To avoid panic? Because they want survivors out first? Because they are rescuing people and not counting bodies yet?

[Dems_R_Losers]

There's a very good reason why the government would be hiding huge body counts right now. They do not want thousands of people to start trying to get in to these areas to confirm whether their relatives are alive or dead. At this point most relatives are being patient and optimistic. A release of a body count in the hundreds would cause them to panic ands try to get in there. This would complicate search and rescue efforts immensely. They do not want to have to take law enforcement people and put them on every road to keep people out, or have to deal with riots and anger from people who cannot get in. The media would certainly be sympathetic to this and stop releasing numbers until told to do so by government officials.