How are 150,000 dead people counted so quickly?

[question everything]

Am not trying to flame anyone. We were out of town last week and had to rely on TV news (mostly NY1) to report about the disaster in Indonesia.

But as the number of dead people kept growing in just a couple of days, I was wondering how the authorities arrived at them. Were they based on a population of cities that just vanished?

[northzax]

1. I believe this is only a pure body count

not including the missing. but I could be mistaken.

[otohara]

2. Estimation

the other day in our paper they had original estimates vs final numbers of past disasters. 99% were over estimated...

[Jesus H. Christ]

4. I don't think that's the case here.

The 155,000 dead is confirmed. Nobody's really speculating on the total number killed.

[otohara]

9. Oh Neither Do I

sadly

[Jesus H. Christ]

3. People count up the bodies they have lying in makeshift morgues.

They report that number. Somebody adds it all up.

[HereSince1628]

7. Algebraically speaking, the approach to the real number will be

a saturation function.

A person with a small time series of data points could project an estimate of the asymptote.

But I expect it is an estimate based on records of the area impacted, its population densities and a small sample of proportion killed in various areas

[Oversea Visitor]

5. Nope

Base on actual count and bury/recovered
Does not include any dead bodies still lying around, floating in the sea or missing.

Indonesia alone is expected to hit 400,000. Cause there is noway to count anything ,there is nothing left.

Pictures you see along the coast of southwest Sumatra in Aceh has a population of 1 million people before the tsunami. Now there is nothing.

[Taxloss]

6. Tolls of this kind are notoriously tricky

But you, as a single individual, could count to 150,000 in nine days.

However, it's not done like that. This is (probably) based on estimate reports from local authorities, which operate in different ways. NGOs also participate. There are thousands of people counting - probably tens of thousands. Also, by this time, the number of missing would be known clearly - after this length, that number can be added to the dead.

However, as I say, these reports are still partial and often inaccurate. What tends to happen from the point of a disaster is that death estimates start very low, then very quickly balloon upwards, then sink back to the pretty-much accurate final tally.

[question everything]

8. Thank you. This makes sense

And yes, I was thinking that as individuals we could not count that many people.

BTW, yesterday on ABC news there was a report that while 3,000 Americans are reported missing, reports do trickle that some, once they got hold of a phone, did contact their families.