NYT: Weeks Later, Most Storm Victims Lie Unnamed

[Pirate Smile]

BATON ROUGE, La., Oct. 4 - In a country that cherishes the names of the dead, reads them aloud, engraves them in stone and stitches them into quilts, it is odd that Hurricane Katrina's victims remain, more than a month later, largely anonymous.

There has been no accounting of their age, sex and race, nor of how they died or where they were found. As for how they lived, it is difficult to find even a Web site paying tribute to individual victims. With 972 deaths confirmed and the search for bodies declared complete, the state has released only 61 bodies and made the names of only 32 victims public.

-snip-
Like any silence, the one blanketing Louisiana's dead is ripe for interpretation - to some, including family members who wait in anguish, it is further proof of bureaucratic bungling or a lack of regard for the poor blacks who doubtless make up many of the victims. To others, it is a deliberate attempt to shield an embarrassing truth from view.

State officials, still in crisis mode, say compiling and releasing data about the dead is simply not a priority. They say several factors have contributed to delays: criminal investigations that have forced them to perform more autopsies than expected; the arrival of a second hurricane, Rita, which once again displaced their staff; and the condition bodies were in after spending days or weeks in the heat or water. The New Orleans coroner, Frank Minyard, has complained that pathologists from around the country have volunteered to help but that he awaits a trailer from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to house them. But critics say that the state officials have not released bodies whose identities are obvious and that Louisiana has imposed too tough a standard on confirming the names of victims.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/05/national/nationalspecial/05identity.html?hp&ex=1128484800&en=2010ae6d412194ae&ei=5094&partner=homepage

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

1. Uhhh, because it is all bullshit?

That would be the easy answer.

[Dogmudgeon]

2. Once again, it's "Blame the Democrats"

"But critics say that the state officials have not released bodies whose identities are obvious and that Louisiana has imposed too tough a standard on confirming the names of victims."

George Bush -- The "The Dog Ate My Homework" President.

--p!

[Danmel]

3. Because nobody cares bout poor dead black people

Dead firemen and investment bankers are much more sympathetic.

WTF is going with the death count from this storm? Will we ever get real numbers? Will we ever find out about the missing? What happened to all those missing children CNN was showing till RIta took the focus away?

Sad. Pathetic and chilling all at the same time.

[intheflow]

4. Such mysteriously low death numbers... & still no mention of the missing!

C'mon, NYT! Connect the dots. They're not releasing names, they release names of people who died weeks after the hurricane, they refuse to use identifying marks on the bodies, FEMA refuses to send housing for all the morticians who ahve volunteered their services, and there are 8-10,000 people still missing. What's not to investigate? :eyes:

[jbnow]

6. It's almost like part of

cheney's "Katrina exercise" is seeing how many unmentioned missing from an area they can get away with.
How stupid to call the search over so soon, so many homes and piles of debris are not explored.

The press really needs to come through. Hoping. Insisting.

How rarely I hear even "with thousands still missing" after the official death toll.

[daleo]

5. Contrast this with 911

When every little bit of debris was swabbed for DNA, or at least that's what it seemed like at the time. But there were rich people in that disaster.

[rodeodance]

7. i am still amazed that bodies were left floating ect for days. maybe

a blanket put over them by the troops-but even then--just left. I can not get over that-or the pics of troops just walking by.

[rodeodance]

8. first the names were posted--then removed (no explanation).

Nor has the Department of Health and Hospitals been willing to make public information that it has collected, from the recovery locations to the autopsy results. Dr. Louis Cataldie, the state emergency medical director, has made it clear that he is bewildered by a reporter's request for precise numbers, saying at a briefing last week that there had been "six to seven homicides" and "there haven't been that many" children.

Asked afterward how many more bodies might be out there, he appeared exasperated. "There is one out there," he said. "That's all that matters, isn't it?"

After that briefing, the Department of Health and Hospitals posted the names of 32 of the dead on the Internet, but by the next morning the list was gone.

On the edges of the disaster zone, a much clearer picture of Hurricane Katrina's victims has emerged. In Houston, the Harris County Medical Examiner's Office lists the names of 53 evacuees who have died, most of natural causes and two by suicide. In Dallas, there are 23, including twins who died of "extreme prematurity due to maternal exhaustion and dehydration occurring as a result of Hurricane Katrina."

[alittlelark]

9. POS propaganda. Why post this drivel?

[Digit]

10. I recall that picture of a corpse who was draped over a fence, decomposing

for almost 3 weeks.
This is beyond incompetence.

[tom_paine]

11. We all KNEW the Busheviks would behanve as other corrupt Totalitarian

regimes have in the past, which is to suppress and/or alter those numbers which make THE PARTY look bad.

Which is why they have moved so rapidly towards Sovietizations of ALL Federal Data Collection and Executive Agencies.

Hell, the Bushevik Ministry of Labor said just a couple months ago that unemployment was 4.9%...better than the Last Days of the Old Republic/Age of Clinton.

Of course, even with their phony, fudged numbers, the total number of jobs are only a couple million more (at best) than 2000, most of them McJobs not good paying jobs.

As always, something doesn't add up...like the Katrina Death Toll.

What is interesting is watching the Busheviks massage numbers they cannot fully control, and how they do it because they can't do the full-blow "Stalin Thing" and disappear the dead then shut up the families.

Soon...but not yet. So what we have is this imperfect mecahnism of delaying the Death Toll as long as possible (hell, that sort of shit has worked for them just about every single time so far) that is visible to people watching...all 1% of us.

Pity our grandchilren, by the time the Bush Grandchildren sit on the Imperial Throne, they will live in a Fully Sovietized landscape, one which makes the current Bushevik Lie Machine look like Glasnost.

[Nothing Without Hope]

12. RELATED: LAT: "Families Lose Loved Ones Again- in a Bureaucratic Mire"

This is outrageous. And yes, I do believe the death toll - especially the number of people who died because of the Bush Administration's actions and lack of them - is being suppressed.

Here's the article, which is clear confirmation of what is said in the OP NYT article:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x4949027
thread title: LAT: "Families Lose Loved Ones Again- in a Bureaucratic Mire" BODIES TAKEN

[booksenkatz]

13. A kick for Wednesday morning. Also, I would like to see a

quilt project for the Katrina victims, just like the quilt project that was done for the victims of 9-11. I visited the 9-11 quilt display when it came through Michigan, it was very moving. The Katrina victims deserve no less. And "Katrina victims" is sort of a misnomer, isn't it, when in fact these people are dead at the hands of the Bush cabal.

[Irish Mastiff]

14. Numbers in Jefferson Parish changed.. Something doesn't seem right.

They split the numbers of dead by "Confirmed Deaths" and "Direct Deaths"

On 9/26 Jefferso Parish had 30 confirmed deaths and 20 dirct deaths. However, they had 152 confirmed deaths and 20 direct deaths listed on 9/10. What happened to those other 122 bodies?

http://outhouserag.typepad.com/hurricane_watch/katrina_aftermath_death_toll/

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=4741097&mesg_id=4741097

[newyawker99]

15. Hi Irish Mastiff!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[Irish Mastiff]

16. Thank you!

I still wonder why the count went down in Jefferson Parish. If the original numbers could be used to extrapolate, we would be looking at about 7,000 dead.
The numbers are way too low. Mississippi death toll numbers are based on "Identified" bodies. If they can't identify you, you are not counted.