Over 50 Katrina evacuees have died in TX

[norml]

Over 50 Katrina evacuees have died in TX
Sep 14, 2005, 11:50 AM


HOUSTON (AP) - Medical examiners says at least 53 Hurricane Katrina evacuees from the New Orleans area have died since coming to Texas.

In Harris County, which includes Houston, most of the 35 deaths were from natural causes, including several heart attacks and complications from cancer. Two refugees killed themselves since an estimated 240-thousand Gulf Coast residents fled to Texas because of the August 29th storm.

There was one dead fetus, and ages of the adult dead ranged from 20 to 104. Many were elderly living in hospitals, hospice centers and nursing homes.

A 71-year-old man from New Orleans died inside the mass shelter at the Astrodome, and a 90-year-old woman died in the stadium parking lot.


snip


http://www.katc.com/Global/story.asp?S=3849680&nav=EyAzeWFs

[booksenkatz]

1. They weren't killed directly by hurricane wind, so they won't count. nt

[Kber]

16. For what it's worth, I'd like to see a separate count

of people killed directly by Katrina and those who died as a result of neglect or other preventable causes.

We can only blame God or Mother Nature for the storm, but if human actions or inactions caused additional needless death, I'd like to know.

[booksenkatz]

18. Good point, Kber

I wish there were a way to tell the difference from the autopsies.

We'll never know how many bodies were eaten by gators or (is it possible?) pumped out to Lake Pontch (do body parts fit thru the pumps?). Plus, by the time they pick up the bodies, many of them will have rotted and returned to the earth. Take your pick -- time is certainly on Bush's side, isn't it?

The decisions of this administration never fail to sicken me, that's for sure.

[marshall]

22. Other injuries

There were two evacuee college students stabbed at Boston College and also some high school students had to be hospitalized in Houston after a fight. The displaced people are under a lot of stress--thus illnesses and deaths and fights, etc.

[1gobluedem]

2. Clarence 'Gatemouth' Brown was one of them

His house in Slidell, LA was destroyed and he evacuated to Texas. He was ill anyway and the trauma just finished him off, poor guy.

[CottonBear]

7. Oh no! Damn. I had not heard that sad news. n/t

[Bridget Burke]

10. He was a truly fine musician....

Gatemouth Brown's music showed blues, country & jazz influences. As well as Louisiana styles such as Cajun & Zydeco.

He didn't have much time left anyway, but his final days should not have been so sad.

[lastliberalintexas]

17. In his hometown of Orange

Very sad, and an incredible musician. Here is a link from our local paper's Sunday edition.

http://www.southeasttexaslive.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=15195345&BRD=2287&PAG=461&dept_id=512588&rfi=8

[Sunkiss BlueStar]

27. I did not know

Gatemouth existed until about two months ago, he had an earthy rich soulful charm about him. The same charm I saw in Ibrahim from Buena Vista Social Club. My brother rented a DVD called Lightning in a Bottle, and there he was along with other music legends including two guys from Aerosmith.

I didn't think I would loose anyone after Ibrahim. I liked to watch him and listen to him sing his Cuban music....


This decade stinks of death and corruption hopefully the chimp will have his comeuppance soon

[expatriot]

3. "natural causes" -now that is a little blurry....

could it be these heart attacks and complications with cancer could have been brought on because they had gone without their medication or normal treatments for a few days?

[buff2]

5. Exactly!

This is an outrage. All these lives gone because of bu$h and his gang of thugs negligence. All the lives gone in Iraq because of bu$h and his warmongering thugs and their thirst for power and blood. God, I couldn't hate them anymore than I do already....but on the other hand I keep saying that everyday. :grr:

[Xenotime]

12. * should be held accountable for the deaths....

of these people..

[hopein08]

6. No chemo, no radiation, no nitro glycerin...

hmmm...yep that would definitely do it. They need to not use "natural causes" there. I've always been under the impression that "natural causes" was more like old age and they usually said things like cancer and heart attacks as specific causes. Maybe I'm wrong.

[LynzM]

8. Then again,

Any time you look at a population of 200k+ people, a few are going to die in the course of a week. Perhaps their lives could have been prolonged, perhaps not, we don't know. I'm not excusing the mismanagement, especially that of getting medicine to those that need it. I'm just pointing out that it's probably not a statistically significant number.

[rainbow4321]

21. And no potassium pills....

Many of the chronically ill are on potassium replacement pills for one reason or another.
There was a ground worker <in St Bernard parish, I think> who called into the main command center saying that a person had run out of her potassium pills and the worker needed guidance in how to get her more since there were no pharmacies or hospitals opened in the area. The main command center person told the worker: "we are not equipped to hand out chronic medicines". Heard this via the FEMA/local NOLA scanner a week after Katrina hit.

Low potassium = heart attack. Add a week of dehydration to that and it is a recipe for really screwed up body electrolytes/death.

[chalky]

14. I remember hearing Randi Rhodes talk about the FEMAs sending

the message out to mortuaries in FL last year to inform doctors that ANY patient they had that died DURING or BECAUSE OF THE HURRICANE, no matter the pre-existing circumstances, were to be counted as victims and the families were eligible for FEMA assistance. (And "because of" was veeeery loosely defined. She read a letter where a doctor had a cancer patient die and I believe the doctor stated that a break in treatment during the storm caused the death later.)

Wonder if they'll give the same response for these victims?

[Radio_Lady]

24. Of course not. Jeb Bush isn't the governor of Louisiana, and so it

doesn't count! No scutiny -- maybe it should be spelled SCREW-tiny!

[Wordie]

20. MSM should make sure there is a count of those who are presumed dead

for Katrina-evacuation-related reasons. Like suicides and heart attacks and CERTAINLY dehydration and other conditions which are a direct result of the evacuation. I doubt any official agency will make such a count, but MSM certainly could compile one (or attempt to, at least).

And as far as people washed away are concerned, at some point, SOMEBODY surely will know they are missing. So, there could be a "missing and presumed dead" portion of the count.

All this is complicated, as I understand it, by the Vital Records Department of NO apparently also being flooded out. (I didn't hear if all the records were permanently destroyed, or salvageable at some future date, or if they were inaccessible, or what.)

And what about property records, then?

What a mess.

[LisaM]

4. Geesh.

I personally wouldn't count the foetus without knowing a little more (was it viable? did the mother miscarry? did the mother die, and her baby also?) but some of these deaths need to be added to the toll. Of course, that would destroy the myth of their great new life in Texas.

[woodsprite]

13. Dehydration is a BIG cause of preterm labor and miscarriage. n/t

[daleo]

9. With a proper evacuation, some might have died anyway.

But this is bound to be many times more than would have died if there had been a proper evacuation. Most of these people would have been at the Superdome, suffering for several days unnecessarily.

[m0nkeyneck]

11. i wonder what the average death rate was....

before katrina; 53 seems like a small # for that many ppl

[GayCanuck]

15. A form of genocide

from playing guitar and partying.

[u4ic]

19. Welcome to DU, GayCanuck!

:toast:

[David Zephyr]

23. Heart Attacks while stuffed into refugee centers are "natural causes"?

I guess the justification of this excuse for murder by neglect is that since a natural disaster caused the need for refugee shelters that then in turn caused the heart attack it is therefore a "natural cause".

Murder by neglect.

[leftofthedial]

25. prompting the bushturd's FEMA to lower the official death toll by 17

[daleo]

26. If you do a standard life table analysis

On 100,000 people from ages birth to 80 and assume 1/80 in each age (highly artificial but just for a ballpark estimate), you would get about 1150 deaths per year, or about 3 per day. Of course this population would probably be older and sicker than a standard population, so you might expect considerably more than this. From the stated population of 240,000 evacuees, you might expect 6 or 7 deaths per day.

53 in the space of a week or so would work out to 7 or 8 per day. If there were really 240,000 evacuees in Texas, and every death was recorded accurately and up to date, then this number doesn't seem that bad. But without knowing for sure how many evacuees are in Texas, and how accurate the count of 53 deaths is, you can't say for sure.