Posted on 09/06/2005 6:48:46 PM PDT by Job03
BILOXI: Coroner insists death count is accurate
Death toll is not being held back
BY GEORGE PAWLACZYK
Sun Herald
EAST BILOXI - The Katrina death toll is not being held back, the Harrison County coroner said as body recovery teams under his direction entered a new phase - searching with heavy equipment.
"There is no reason for me to deceive the public or the news media because that's not going to help the situation either," Coroner Gary Hargrove said. "Because if we start reporting low numbers and keep them low and then all of a sudden, 'bam,' we walk in and put high numbers on it, then you've created another problem. You've created deception."
On Monday, the official death toll for the Mississippi Gulf Coast was 136. Gov. Haley Barbour on Sunday said he expected the unofficial but credible total in Mississippi was 167 and expected to rise.
Prior to a Mass at Nativity Blessed Virgin Mary Cathedral in Biloxi on Saturday, Biloxi Bishop Thomas Rodi said he had doubts that the death tolls reported through Hargrove's office were accurate. Earlier, Rodi visited the Sun-Herald's offices and said he believed there were "hundreds" of storm dead in the area.
"They should release all of the names or none of the names," Rodi said during an interview Saturday at his offices at the cathedral.
Hargrove, however, said that all Katrina dead, including the unidentified, have been included in the daily Emergency Operations Center tally.
"The community does not need deception at this point in time. They need to be able to trust their elected officials," Hargrove said.
(Excerpt) Read more at sunherald.com ...
Come election time, the Democrats will twist the truth anyway. Democrats run things in New Orleans but will never admit to any blame similar to Clinton's past techniques.
Uh-oh. That means the death count will be in excess of 10,000. There were at least 10,000 dead on the voter rolls long before the hurricane.
On the other hand, in Louisiana, at least the dead get to vote the people responsible for their deaths out of office!
"For days after 9/11, people still tried to have the death toll at 20,000+."
Ohmigosh, that is so true. The first day we thought it might be 40,000, since that were how many people were in the WTC everyday. That was one of the few bright spots in the weeks afterward, watching that death count go down and down.
In fact, months and months later my friend who coincidentaly lived at that time in NOLA, STILL thought tens of thousands had died on 9/11 in NYC. The dropping numbers were not such a big story out of town it seems.
Perxactly!
Hell, that's why they bury them above ground in New Orleans -- it's easier to get them to the polls that way..
Semper Fi
No numbers from La, but I am thinking maybe the total just barely exceeds 1000. They really do not have any idea how many were left in the city when the storm hit. As to bodies everywhere, unless they were doing world-class editing, the aerial footage does not seem to support this assertion. I believe the mayor is going to look like a fool for tossing out such numbers.
Just to be fair, the flood also receeded after the storm everywhere else, in NO it rose. This doesn't excuse the LA or NO leadership but it's an all together different situation.
I thought it was interesting in light of all these huge death estimates of deaths in NO to hear today that the current tally of deaths caused by radiation released in the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident is 56. However, there is a lot of mental illness related to the accident because so many people feared they would die! The media inflates every anticipation of death because they are part of the death culture and enjoy the prospect of many babies killed in abortions, body bags ordered for any war we fight, and fatalities in any disaster. It's a sick business.
Vitter and Nagin both said 10,000
They know it isn't that, or at least have no proof to substantiate that number.
When the actual number comes in much lower, they can pretend to breathe a sigh of relief and act like they actually might have had their $hit together in preventing that many from dying.
I think the actual death toll will be 2 or 3 thousand, but that's just a guess, and I hope that even that is on the high side.
All my donations go to MS and AL. Screw NOLA - I'm not going to donate money to people who play the race card.
The higher the death count, the more the libs think they have a reason to blame Bush. Then they can say Bush murdered 10,000 people.
I think that the difference is that the govenor of Mississippi, turned over the evacuation and preparation for storm relief to FEMA before the storm hit, instead of waiting for two or three days after.
I have been wondering for a few days now, as to what the future holds for the good Mayor Nagin. With the departure
from this world of Bob Denver, we do need a new Gilligan. Maybe Blanco can come along as the Skipper.
Now there's a three hour tour that I think I would bypass.
I have family in Gulf-port and Biloxi. Things are pretty bad there, but the media is focused on NO so we don't hear much about it.
As for the death toll in that area, expect it to climb to over 1000 based on first hand reports. I'm pretty sure communications are still quite poor and officials are having a difficult time getting counts from all areas tallied up.
This is Mississippi's death toll. No one has released the toll in Louisiana. The death toll from post-Katrina violence will likely dwarf Mississippi's body count.
I got some very happy news today: the unaccounted for on my list has been reduced from 36 to 19. Some got out much earlier but just didn't have the means to communicate. Two were airlifted from the attic of their home today, where they and their two cats spent the past five days. I am rejoicing tonight, because I have renewed hope that the remaining 19 will be found alive.
1,000 or so in MS sounds about right. LA will likely be close to the 10k mark when everything is said and done.
""DMort is telling us to expect up to 40,000 bodies," Dan Buckner said, quoting officials with the Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Team, a volunteer arm of Homeland Security."
The article you posted seems very legit.
I hope the numbers of 40k are way overestimated.
It also said 120 days to recover them all from attics and houses. So we wont know for awhile. I am assuming he is talking about NO.
I hope for the lowest death count possible, maybe Biloxi didnt lose as many as feared. That would be great.
I definately wouldn't rule it out. This isn't a case of anyone wishing for high counts IMO. Even one week out, I think it's too much for most to deal with that we could have lost that many people in America, in 2005.
Its a nightmare I cant wake up from even at 500 miles away.
I know your interest in weather and bet you will always remember the NHC made a simple graphic 3 day prior, that if heeded could have saved so many lives. They were right. God bless the NHC who kept it from being even worse. What would Galveston have gave for such an accurate warning 3 days in advance?
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