Official Katrina Death Toll Now 1,310 - Hundreds Still Missing - AP

[hatrack]

NEW ORLEANS -- Nearly six months after Hurricane Katrina, 1,310 bodies have been found, but the real death toll is clearly higher. How much higher, no one can say with certainty. Hundreds of people are still unaccounted for, and some of them -- again, no one is sure how many -- were probably washed into the Gulf of Mexico, drowned when their fishing boats sank, swept into Lake Pontchartrain or alligator-infested swamps, or buried under crushed homes, said Dr. Louis Cataldie, Louisiana medical examiner.

Cataldie noted that coffins, disgorged from the earth by the floodwaters, have been found great distances from their graveyards, and ''if we have coffins that have washed 30 miles away, I can assure you there are people who have." ''The likelihood is there are people we will not find," he said.

New Orleans Coroner Frank Minyard said a final sweep of homes in the devastated Ninth Ward will be done this month with help from federal officials. After that, he said, any more bodies found will probably be discovered in out-of-the-way places by hunters or fishermen. But neither he nor Cataldie would venture a guess as to how many undiscovered victims are out there.

The remains of 1,079 people have been recovered in Louisiana; an additional 231 were found in Mississippi. But Louisiana officials have information on roughly 300 people whose loved ones are desperately searching for them, months after the Aug. 29 storm struck the Gulf Coast and scattered the region's residents.

EDIT

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2006/02/11/katrina_death_toll_put_at_1310_with_hundreds_missing/

[BlueEyedSon]

1. Come on, it's at least 10k!!!

[hatrack]

2. As the headline noted, this is the "official" death toll

Sadly, there's no smiley for "choke this down with a block of salt".

[MADem]

3. And so long as it is "officially" less than the 911 toll, the

administration will be happy. Can't have anyone making comparisons, now, can we???