Due to Katrina?

A US Senator claimed there'd be 10K dead. Are there any official tallies yet?

Everyone's been kinda tight lipped, best guess I heard was thousands?  That was all that was said, thousands!

My current estimate, after reviewing the damage and taking into account probably 7-10 percent remained at home for various reasons, is between 10,000 and 20,000.  It was originally around 10,000, until some of the newer footage came out.  The figure of 180 deaths in Mississippi is ludicrous.  According to Fox News, there is a single morgue in Mississippi with over a thousand bodies in it.

My guess would be around 25,000.  Many more missing never to be found.

Back on Wednesday, I heard one county in Mississippi had gathered 100 bodies only because they were tripping all over them while trying to get rescue efforts going. Officials said they weren't actually even looking for bodies yet.

Less than 10% of whatever number the media latches on to.

For example the media thought there would be 50,000 dead in the WTC. it ended up being around 3,700.

If the media starts saying 10K dead in NOLA the real number will be less than 1,000. This is based upon the media always hoping for the worst, and the reality that people are tougher than most give them credit for.

The only mechanism by which katrina could kill an otherwise healthy person was drowning or blunt trauma. It wasnt hot enough or long enough for dehydration to be an issue.

Less than 5,000.

Quoted: My guess would be around 25,000.  Many more missing never to be found.

+1

400,000 stayed in New Orleans. 220,000 are in Texas, more in other states. 25,000 to 40,000 dead when it's all said and done. All most all will be people that didn't leave NO when they were told too.

10,000 to 15,000.

People are still dying stuck in there homes, waiting for rescue.  I saw the report as well on Fox about there being 1000+ in one morgur alone.  

don't forget there will colateral deaths due to disease and infection from the contaminated water so many have been wallowing in for 4 days.

children and older folks will suffer and die the quickest due to disitary and disease, due to the lack of immediate availability of strong antibiotics or correct and effective antibiotics.

and if your a statistical type there will be deaths related years later from infections from exposure to the conditions these people were exposed to.

the bad news is we all get to pay for it and at the same time get the blame for it.


the good news is .....I just saved a bunch of money on my car insurance by switching to geeko.

Quoted: Less than 10% of whatever number the media latches on to. For example the media thought there would be 50,000 dead in the WTC. it ended up being around 3,700. If the media starts saying 10K dead in NOLA the real number will be less than 1,000. This is based upon the media always hoping for the worst, and the reality that people are tougher than most give them credit for. The only mechanism by which katrina could kill an otherwise healthy person was drowning or blunt trauma. It wasnt hot enough or long enough for dehydration to be an issue.

Tell that to the families of the people that have died from dehydration.  As far as not being hot enough,  dear god, heat will only speed it up.  You can die from dehydration when it's 40 degrees.  Same way a good portion of hypothermia deaths occur when it's in the 50's  nice and cool out no big deal, don't worry about the jacket.  Get lost get tired, lay down, stop producing body heat, bang, fuck, your dead.  

ETA:  6,200 to 14,800.  Sorry, my wife was talking numbers about something else.  But they sound close to what I would guess.

2,000 - 3,000
Maybe less

Humans are tougher and more resilient than most realize. Some just aren't aware of how much they can survive until they are faced with it.

2,000 initially from the storm.

25,000 from lack of timely help.

~ 300

maybe up to 500 if you count direct result deaths subsequent to the storm/flood

I don't thank these thousands estimates are so, since there would already (after a week) be numbers posted in the hundreds of 'confirmed dead'

don't get me wrong, 500 is a big number and would rank as the most deadly hurricane in the last 100 years (US deaths)

The paper reported 167 confirmed dead in MS this morning.

Quoted: Less than 10% of whatever number the media latches on to. For example the media thought there would be 50,000 dead in the WTC. it ended up being around 3,700. If the media starts saying 10K dead in NOLA the real number will be less than 1,000. This is based upon the media always hoping for the worst, and the reality that people are tougher than most give them credit for. The only mechanism by which katrina could kill an otherwise healthy person was drowning or blunt trauma. It wasnt hot enough or long enough for dehydration to be an issue.

You are wrong in a number of ways.

The media "rule" you mentioned more often works in the opposite direction.  For the first few days after the tsunami, the toll figures they quoted were very low (20 thousand or something similar).  By your rule, then the real death toll should have been 2000.  A more accurate means of estimating the death toll is to estimate how many people remained in the area, and compare it to the damage images of the area.  If you know that the population of town X is 50,000, and officials say that they believe 5 percent remained in the area, and the photos show slabs where homes remained, then you can safely estimate around 2,500 hundred folks were killed.  Note that I said estimate.  The officials may have been incorrect, etc.  This is how I estimated my death toll figures.  

The way you worded that last part indicates you don't think that the death toll will be very high.

The only mechanism by which katrina could kill an otherwise healthy person was drowning or blunt trauma. It wasnt hot enough or long enough for dehydration to be an issue

Well, that mechanism is quite powerful enough, since it managed to kill over 200,000 during the Tsunami.  I am sure you have heard all of the stories of folks being trapped in the second floors of homes, calling out to rescuers.  There are thousands of these stories.  How many people ran to the second floor of their homes, just like these folks did, in areas where the surge eventually rose higher than their second floor?

The low death toll figures will get much, much higher.  We need to become prepared for that fact.  It is very sad.

Quoted: ~ 300 maybe up to 500 if you count direct result deaths subsequent to the storm/flood I don't thank these thousands estimates are so, since there would already (after a week) be numbers posted in the hundreds of 'confirmed dead' don't get me wrong, 500 is a big number and would rank as the most deadly hurricane in the last 100 years (US deaths)

I think the lack of reported figures only points out how FU things are down there. I pary you are correct, but fear you are not. When I read of gov personnel bypassing bodies in doing their job, it tells me they are overwhelmed. I read of reports of beaches being roped off because of bodies floating in. That tells me we don't have a clue at this point- and may never get a final count.

Quoted: ~ 300 maybe up to 500 if you count direct result deaths subsequent to the storm/flood I don't thank these thousands estimates are so, since there would already (after a week) be numbers posted in the hundreds of 'confirmed dead' don't get me wrong, 500 is a big number and would rank as the most deadly hurricane in the last 100 years (US deaths)

There is a single morgue in Mississippi with over a thousand bodies in it, according to Fox News.

Quoted: 2,000 - 3,000 Maybe less Humans are tougher and more resilient than most realize. Some just aren't aware of how much they can survive until they are faced with it.

+1........hopefully some of these people that have survived the flood will toughen up a little and make the sacrafices necessary to prepare for emergencies in the future.

with no clean water to drink... a lot more people will die from dehydration.

My guess... too many

Quoted: Quoted: 2,000 - 3,000 Maybe less Humans are tougher and more resilient than most realize. Some just aren't aware of how much they can survive until they are faced with it. +1........

Those who are surviving are surviving now.  Most of those who died died sometime Monday during the storm surge.  Resiliency will only take you so far when a 20 foot storm surge comes.  I think many folks are in denial about the count, because of the horrific nature of it all, which I completely understand, by the way.  It will be much higher.  We need to prepare ourselves for it.

Well, its started to come out.

www.breitbart.com/news/2005/09/04/D8CDGL400.html

HHS Chief: Katrina Death Toll in Thousands
Sep 04 10:53 AM US/Eastern
 

WASHINGTON


Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt said Sunday the death toll from Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath is in the thousands, the first time a federal official has acknowledged what many had feared.

Leavitt said he couldn't provide a precise number on the impact of the devastation, but when asked if it was in the thousands, he told CNN's "Late Edition," "I think it's evident it's in the thousands."

"It's clear to me that this has been sickeningly difficult, and profoundly tragic circumstance," Leavitt said.

Earlier in the day, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff had declined to estimate the death toll, but conceded that an untold number of people could have perished in swamped homes and temporary shelters where many went for days without food or water.

"I think we need to prepare the country for what's coming," Chertoff said. "What's going to happen when we de-water and remove the water from New Orleans is we're going to uncover people who died, maybe hiding in houses, got caught by the flood, people whose remains are going to be found in the streets. ... It is going to be about as ugly of a scene as I think you can imagine."

All totaled, 18-20,000  

I would guess that the actual total is gonna come in around 2500 judging by reports of  confirmed deaths. I do not subscribe to the higher  figures because the water kinda came up slowly so able bodied people would have had  a chance to swim or find something to hang on to or float on.  I'm sure that many elderly persons were removed from the area by their families leaving only a smaller percentage that had no family or means of leaving.  One other thing, remember the initial figures we were given for the twin towers collapse, they were really astronomical. But then they figured out all the missing people were with friends or out having a beer.  The last group of "missing" are the ones that thought they could escape their identities but did not realize the level of difficulty involved especially with no time for planning.  So I'll put the "official" count at 2500 dead (max)

By the time it is all said and done, which could be months to years, I am leaning towards 10-20K. That number could get worse if the health crisis everyone says could happen (disease, etc) kicks in.

It could easily go over 10k in the New Orleans area alone. And what I think will shock everyone is that a bunch of those deaths will be white not black. The media is showing mostly black victims because that happens to be the area the cameras are in. No one seems to be mentioning that New Orleans is 90 miles from the coast and barely any help has been sent to those lower lying parishes. Everyone has been distracted by the complete chaos inside the city.

I heard a report yesterday that a helicopter  flying over Plaquemines & St. Bernard Parishes saw hundreds of dead people on their roof tops.

Quoted: 2,000 - 3,000 Maybe less Humans are tougher and more resilient than most realize. Some just aren't aware of how much they can survive until they are faced with it.

Yea, humans are real resilient when they're under water.  Or get diarhea and dehydrate.

University Of Colorado made a series of predictions about this kind of storm 5 years ago.  Every one of their predictions as to the damage has come true.  Their predicted death toll is 60,000.  We're likely not going to know the actual death toll for a couple of years.  

Quoted: I would guess that the actual total is gonna come in around 2500 judging by reports of  confirmed deaths. I do not subscribe to the higher  figures because the water kinda came up slowly so able bodied people would have had  a chance to swim or find something to hang on to or float on.  I'm sure that many elderly persons were removed from the area by their families leaving only a smaller percentage that had no family or means of leaving.  One other thing, remember the initial figures we were given for the twin towers collapse, they were really astronomical. But then they figured out all the missing people were with friends or out having a beer.  The last group of "missing" are the ones that thought they could escape their identities but did not realize the level of difficulty involved especially with no time for planning.  So I'll put the "official" count at 2500 dead (max)

If a single morgue in Mississippi has between 1,000 and 2,000 bodies in it, as reported by a Fox News reporter who was there, how can the TOTAL death toll be 2,500?  Denial is not just a river in Egypt.

.

Never mind how many people are gettign killed by the Jackals that are more intent on destroying than saving.....

I think the total dead in LA, MS and AL will be in excess of 50,000.

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20050905/D8CDOMHG0.html

NEW ORLEANS (AP) - New Orleans turned much of its attention Sunday to gathering up and counting the dead across a ghastly landscape awash in perhaps thousands of corpses. "It is going to be about as ugly of a scene as I think you can imagine," the nation's homeland security chief warned.

As authorities struggled to keep order, police shot eight people, killing five or six, after gunmen opened fire on a group of contractors traveling across a bridge on their way to make repairs, authorities said.

Air and boat crews searched flooded neighborhoods for survivors, and federal officials urged those still left in New Orleans to leave for their own safety.

To expedite the rescues, the Coast Guard requested through the media that anyone stranded hang out brightly colored or white linens or something else to draw attention. But with the electricity out though much of the city, it was not known if the message was being received.

With large-scale evacuations completed at the Superdome and Convention Center, the death toll was not known. But bodies were everywhere: floating in canals, slumped in wheelchairs, abandoned on highways and medians and hidden in attics.

"I think it's evident it's in the thousands," Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt said Sunday on CNN, echoing predictions by city and state officials last week. The U.S. Public Health Service said one morgue alone, at a St. Gabriel prison, expected 1,000 to 2,000 bodies.

In the first official count in the New Orleans area, Louisiana emergency medical director Louis Cataldie said authorities had verified 59 deaths - 10 of them at the Superdome.

"We need to prepare the country for what's coming," Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said on "Fox News Sunday.""We are going to uncover people who died, maybe hiding in houses, got caught by the flood. ... It is going to be about as ugly of a scene as I think you can imagine."

Chertoff said rescuers have encountered a number of people who said they did not want to evacuate.

"That is not a reasonable alternative," he said. "We are not going to be able to have people sitting in houses in the city of New Orleans for weeks and months while we de-water and clean this city. ... The flooded places, when they're de-watered, are not going to be sanitary."

In Sunday's bridge confrontation, 14 contractors on their way to help plug the breech in the 17th Street Canal were traveling across the Danziger Bridge under police escort when they came under fire, said John Hall, a spokesman for the Army Corps of Engineers. Police shot at eight people carrying guns, killing five or six, Deputy Police Chief W.J. Riley said. None of the contractors was injured, authorities said.

In addition to the lawlessness, civilian deaths and uncertainty about their families, New Orleans' police have had to deal with suicides in their ranks. Two officers took their lives, including the department spokesman, Paul Accardo, who died Saturday, according to Riley. Both shot themselves in the head, he said.

"I've got some firefighters and police officers that have been pretty much traumatized," Mayor Ray Nagin said. "And we've already had a couple of suicides, so I am cycling them out as we speak. ... They need physical and psychological evaluations."

The strain was apparent in other ways. Aaron Broussard, president of Jefferson Parish, dropped his head and cried on NBC's "Meet the Press."

"The guy who runs this building I'm in, emergency management, he's responsible for everything. His mother was trapped in St. Bernard nursing home, and every day she called him and said, 'Are you coming, son? Is somebody coming?' And he said, 'And yeah, Momma, somebody's coming to get you. Somebody's coming to get you on Tuesday. Somebody's coming to get you on Wednesday. Somebody's coming to get you Thursday. Somebody's coming to get you on Friday' - and she drowned Friday night. She drowned on Friday night," Broussard said.

"Nobody's coming to get her, nobody's coming to get her. The secretary's promise, everybody's promise. They've had press conferences - I'm sick of the press conferences. For God's sakes, shut up and send us somebody."

Hundreds of thousands of people already have been evacuated, seeking safety in Texas, Tennessee and other states. The first group of refugees who will take shelter in Arizona arrived Sunday in Phoenix. With more than 230,000 already in Texas, Gov. Rick Perry ordered emergency officials to begin preparations to airlift some of them to other states that have offered help.

What will happen to the refugees in the long term was not known.

Back in New Orleans, walk-up stragglers at the Convention Center were checked by Navy medics before they were evacuated. Lt. Andy Steczo said he treated people for bullet wounds, knife wounds, infections, dehydration and chronic problems such as diabetes.

"We're cleaning them up the best we can and then shipping them out," Steczo said.

One person he treated was 56-year-old Pedro Martinez, who had a gash on his ankle and cuts on his knuckle and forearm. Martinez said he was injured while helping people onto rescue boats. "I don't have any medication and it hurts. I'm glad to get out of here," he said.

In a devastated section on the edge of the French Quarter, people went into a store, whose windows were already shattered, and took out bottles of soda and juice.

A corpse of an elderly man lay wrapped in a child's bedsheet decorated with the cartoon characters Batman, Robin and the Riddler. The body was in a wooden cart on Rampart Street, one shoe on, one shoe off.

Rene Gibson, 42, driving a truck while hunting for water and ice, said people are not going to leave willingly. "People been (here) all their life. They don't know nothing else," he said.

Amid the tragedy, about two dozen people gathered in the French Quarter for the Decadence Parade, an annual Labor Day gay celebration. Matt Menold, 23, a street musician wearing a sombrero and a guitar slung over his back, said: "It's New Orleans, man. We're going to celebrate."

In New Orleans' Garden District, a woman's body lay at the corner of Jackson Avenue and Magazine Street - a business area with antique shops on the edge of blighted housing. The body had been there since at least Wednesday. As days passed, people covered the corpse with blankets or plastic.

By Sunday, a short wall of bricks had been built around the body, holding down a plastic tarpaulin. On it, someone had spray-painted a cross and the words, "Here lies Vera. God help us."

Quoted: don't forget there will colateral deaths due to disease and infection from the contaminated water so many have been wallowing in for 4 days. children and older folks will suffer and die the quickest due to disitary and disease, due to the lack of immediate availability of strong antibiotics or correct and effective antibiotics. and if your a statistical type there will be deaths related years later from infections from exposure to the conditions these people were exposed to.

+1 I agree

My best friend flew over two areas where dead bodies had been washed with the current, hundreds of them. He told me he expects it will be over 10,000 in NO alone.

Glad I'm up relatively high, we're due for a bad hurricane up here......

Just pulling it out of my ass but i will say 6,000 in N.O and maybe 3,000 in all other areas combined.  Also I will go out on a limb that most killed in N.O. were not drowned but shot.  Squatters stayed their with the intention of looting alot of violence will happen as a result.

I have friends there (oil related, like me).  They are all OK (they evacuated or waited out the storm downtown or in the quarter).  They are now involved in the rescue efforts inside and outside of New Orleans where they can help (although the NG still is not coordinating at all and is turning away a ton of qualified people with boats, for instance) and I may be in the next few weeks.

I think that this will be bad.  I am planning to help, but the fact that the person who asked if I was busy specifically mentioned an incident quite a few years back where I responded efficiently under pretty awful circumstances as the reason for asking me suggests to me that this will be horror movie bad.  He has had several people try to help him out today (he is working with another person I know and whom I dislike but who is dead stable under pressure), and they really wanted to, but one run out and back was all that they could take.  Telling people "just don't look at them" doesn't work.

I am more negative than usual about the numbers.

Quoted: My best friend flew over two areas where dead bodies had been washed with the current, hundreds of them. He told me he expects it will be over 10,000 in NO alone. Glad I'm up relatively high, we're due for a bad hurricane up here......

I can confirm this from two people I know out there now.  There are some places where there are so many bodies that they look like a raft in between the houses and up against the trees where the tree branches kept them from drifting.  My friends are in boats, not in the air, and they are in different places, and I am not aware that they are trained to count floating bodies (and I know some pilots are), but they think that they probably passed more than 200 bodies, each.  Again, they are working different areas.  This doesn't bode well for the low estimates.

Lots, but I hope the last two vicitms are the mayor and the governor.  If there are two people in this whole mess who need to be gator turds right now, it's them.
matthew

http://www.breitbart.com/news/2005/09/04/D8CDRVD80.html

The dead recovered from the flooded streets of New Orleans will be brought to a warehouse in this small Mississippi River town, where medical teams will try to identify potentially thousands of bodies.

The fact that St. Gabriel was chosen and that the makeshift morgue is next to the City Hall, Head Start and a senior citizen center doesn't sit well with many locals.

"Put it this way: Would they put it in a rich (area)?" said Fenolia Green, an 88-year-old retiree housing two nieces and nephews left homeless by Hurricane Katrina. "They always dump on the poor."

"It would be different in Baton Rouge," said Jackie Wilson. "This place has two, three streets. I hope it doesn't start stinking around here."

People living in the town of about 5,500 say they also worry about the possibility the bodies might carry diseases, and they wonder about the plan to close the roads into town to keep sightseers away.

Police Chief Kevin Ambeau said he had been assured residents won't be in danger. Still, City Hall activities are being moved to other locations.

Dump trucks, 18-wheelers and other vehicles have been rumbling down the narrow streets of St. Gabriel, 15 miles south of Baton Rouge, since Wednesday to prepare the site, residents said.

The morgue won't be the first undesirable government facility to be located in the mostly poor, rural area along the Mississippi River: There are two prisons nearby and a facility in the area was long home to patients with Hansen's disease, or leprosy.

Darlene Brown, who lives across the street from the planned morgue, tried to keep her own concerns in perspective.

"So what if I'm going to be inconvenienced for a while," she said. "It's nothing like those people are going through."

Do you mean "estimates"?

Quoted: If a single morgue in Mississippi has between 1,000 and 2,000 bodies in it, as reported by a Fox News reporter who was there, how can the TOTAL death toll be 2,500?  Denial is not just a river in Egypt.

They dont have 2,000 bodies. They are preparing to recive up to that many.  On the news this morning they said the offical death total for NO was 59, including 10 who died at the superdome.

The person on Fox two days ago I heard said that the bodies WERE ALREADY IN THE MORGUE.  It must be a different morgue than the one you heard about.  What do you think the total death toll will be, 300 or 400?

Quoted: Quoted: I would guess that the actual total is gonna come in around 2500 judging by reports of  confirmed deaths. I do not subscribe to the higher  figures because the water kinda came up slowly so able bodied people would have had  a chance to swim or find something to hang on to or float on.  I'm sure that many elderly persons were removed from the area by their families leaving only a smaller percentage that had no family or means of leaving.  One other thing, remember the initial figures we were given for the twin towers collapse, they were really astronomical. But then they figured out all the missing people were with friends or out having a beer.  The last group of "missing" are the ones that thought they could escape their identities but did not realize the level of difficulty involved especially with no time for planning.  So I'll put the "official" count at 2500 dead (max) If a single morgue in Mississippi has between 1,000 and 2,000 bodies in it, as reported by a Fox News reporter who was there, how can the TOTAL death toll be 2,500?  Denial is not just a river in Egypt.

I base my guesstimates on what I see and here. I have seen pictures of one body floating in the river and about  three in the street.  I have not actually heard the story of a thousand dead bodies in one morgue in Miss.  although I have heard and read of 59 confirmed deaths in La. I believe the body count will be high in Miss. where the Hurricane took a more direct hit and lower in NO where the water rose more "slowly".

Prediction:  Number = Bigger than breadbox, smaller than t he Empire State Building.

Why offer any speculations?  It is what it is though we have a tendency to fear the worst.

Quoted: Why offer any speculations?  It is what it is though we have a tendency to fear the worst.

It is good to be mentally prepared for the news.  The folks who say 500-1000 are going to be hit very hard by reality if the number is 20 times that amount.

Quoted: Quoted: Why offer any speculations?  It is what it is though we have a tendency to fear the worst. It is good to be mentally prepared for the news.  The folks who say 500-1000 are going to be hit very hard by reality if the number is 20 times that amount.

I don't understand why pumping up the numbers of dead will help anything, just makes the situation worse.  Besides most death tolls are slowly increase incrementaly.

Quoted: Quoted: My best friend flew over two areas where dead bodies had been washed with the current, hundreds of them. He told me he expects it will be over 10,000 in NO alone. Glad I'm up relatively high, we're due for a bad hurricane up here...... I can confirm this from two people I know out there now.  There are some places where there are so many bodies that they look like a raft in between the houses and up against the trees where the tree branches kept them from drifting.  My friends are in boats, not in the air, and they are in different places, and I am not aware that they are trained to count floating bodies (and I know some pilots are), but they think that they probably passed more than 200 bodies, each.  Again, they are working different areas.  This doesn't bode well for the low estimates.

Any chance the flooding unearthed graves and they are seeing some that were already dead?