Katrina Death Toll Estimates Upwards of 40,000 (moved from ATSNN)

A mortician working with DMort (Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Team), a volunteer arm of Homeland Security, is saying they are expecting at least 40,000 bodies.



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At least 25,000 body bags have been delivered Body bags arrive as survivors are forced to leave.

Looks like the death toll will be much higher than expected.

This certainly is by far the worse catastrophy of our lifetimes

I ask God to have mercy on us- not many of us want wars and evil lives.

Why must the poor always get the worse?

Why do people have to suffer so much? Children?

You know God, sometimes i wonder about you.

Let's all hope this is a monumental error and that this figure has been greatly exaggerated....

Those figures sound more and more like casualties of war than of a natural disaster...

I'm severely hoping that those in the paths of future hurricanes have listened and learned....Every life tacked on to this immeasurable number is a small-scale catastrophe in-and-of itself...

The morbid side of me can't help but wonder if Mizar and Lady Lily are among those...I've had very serious concerns over them this past week....I know ATS is not at the front of their minds if they're still with us, but I hope and pray that they'll return to us safely...

[edit on 9/8/2005 by EnronOutrunHomerun]

eh, believe nothing. These are all estimates, and only the goriest make the headlines. Also depends on if you count the immediate dead, or the ones who will die in following weeks.

Theres a picture of a woman, dead in the wheel chair, with family all around. Youve all seen it. Well, the caption said she suffered from congestive heart failure. Well, not to sound callous, but she was dying allready. You need to take into account how many sick and elderly had their numbers coming up that week anyways. Read the obituaries some time. Here in chicago, they have 2 or 3 pages a day. Big city. Lots of people die everyday (sick and elderly)

Im not lessening their lives, but their deaths will undoubtedly be blamed on the hurricane. Kind of weird though, for all the talk of 1000s dead, ive only seen 2 pictures. Is there a blackout? I cant see 10000, letalone 40000. From all the video and stuff, there should be bodies EVERYWHERE. Where are they?

[edit on 8-9-2005 by spliff4020]

Remember that the 911 estimates were off, lets stick with the 10,000 for now and hope that its less....

the 9/11 estimates were about 10000 to according to guiliani, werent they?

I dont think there will be that many. It sounds like sensationalistic journalism. All the talk of death and chaos. Nothing positive. Gore sells.



fear and consumption....the american way

The media is in a difficult position at the moment. FEMA has requested that the media does not film the dead bodies. This possibly can be construed as a method to control public outcry. However, people will point out that they are simply respecting the dead and their families.

From Nightly News Blog with Brian Williams:

And tempers are getting hot. While we were attempting to take pictures of the National Guard (a unit from Oklahoma) taking up positions outside a Brooks Brothers on the edge of the Quarter, the sergeant ordered us to the other side of the boulevard. The short version is: there won't be any pictures of this particular group of Guard soldiers on our newscast tonight. Rules (or I suspect in this case an order on a whim) like those do not HELP the palpable feeling that this area is somehow separate from the United States.

At that same fire scene, a police officer from out of town raised the muzzle of her weapon and aimed it at members of the media... obvious members of the media... armed only with notepads. Her actions (apparently because she thought reporters were encroaching on the scene) were over the top and she was told. There are automatic weapons and shotguns everywhere you look. It's a stance that perhaps would have been appropriate during the open lawlessness that has long since ended on most of these streets. Someone else points out on television as I post this: the fact that the National Guard now bars entry (by journalists) to the very places where people last week were barred from LEAVING (The Convention Center and Superdome) is a kind of perverse and perfectly backward postscript to this awful chapter in American history.

link

I think you can safely divide that by ten.

I will be surprised if the count makes it to 1500.


I suspect that the reports were made from the stress of seeing corpses flaoting down the streets and assumed many more would be found buried under rubble.

.......40k?! thats way off. the original reports said as many as 10k may be dead but its now apparent that the figure is way less. katrina was a horrible disaster but i think the current death toll for all of louisiana is around 650. that puts the total toll maybe around 1k. one thing this disaster has shown us, however, is that all the american celebrities will enthusiasticly rally for the tsunami in asia but they contributed much less support in a disaster in their own country.