Officials: Death Toll Lower Than Expected

But how do we know if they’re telling us the truth?

by Jennifer Monroe

NEW ORLEANS, LA — (OfficialWire) — 09/11/05 — According to retired Col. Terry J. Ebbert, who oversees police and emergency operations as New Orleans’s chief of homeland security, "The numbers [of dead] so far are relatively minor as compared with the dire predictions of 10,000."

"There’s some encouragement in what we found in the initial sweeps," he said.

The first organized effort to search the city for its dead has turned up far fewer bodies than expected, officials said Friday, raising hopes that the city’s death toll from Hurricane Katrina might be much lower than the 10,000 Mayor Ray Nagin and others have predicted. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) had ordered 25,000 body bags to be flown to a temporary morgue in St. Gabriel for Louisiana fatalities. Orders for a further 50,000 body bags have also been reported. So what happened?

Ebbert would not provide any figures on the count so far in New Orleans, saying that it would take another two weeks before the search for the city’s dead could yield a reliable assessment.

More than 350,000 homes are still without power in New Orleans and the surrounding area, compared with about 1 million just after the hurricane, according to new estimates by Jimmy Field, a member of the state’s Public Service Commission, and Daniel Packer, the president of Entergy New Orleans, the city’s major electricity provider.

In St. Bernard Parish, which was one of the hardest hit areas, 99 per cent of the homes and businesses are still without power, Field said. In Orleans Parish, that figure is 89 per cent, and just over 50 percent in Jefferson Parish.

Police officers, National Guardsmen and members of the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division are moving from street to street, house to house in an effort to find, remove and identify the dead.

Louisiana’s official death count currently stands at just 154, and Mississippi’s is 211.

Unfortunately, the media can’t be everywhere, all of the time. How on earth can Americans be sure that FEMA and the Bush administration are telling us the truth? Numerous reports and statements, by the government officials who are controlling the affected areas have been found to be false. Even FEMA director Michael "Brownie" Brown’s resume and credentials have been found to exaggerated (at best) or simply untrue (likely).

My expectation is that in the end, the reported death toll will not exceed the number of deaths on 9/11, whether or not more people died as a result of Hurricane Katrina and the resulting flood. The fact is that with their poll numbers in a constant downward spin, the Bush administration cannot afford the fall-out from a large death-count.

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