Katrina Dead and Missing: Silence.

Do you remember Ray Nagin, New Orleans mayor, and others giving an estimate of "thousands....up to 10,000 dead" from hurricane Katrina? The only numbers of dead we heard after that was an amount with an update or two giving numbers in the hundreds. Nothing more. Nothing about the missing, to speak of.

How much about this have you heard? How many actually died? How many are actually still missing?

Contrast this with, for instance, the events of 9/11, which are a lot more unclear and controversial. Within days we knew how pretty much how many dead and missing. And we knew these numbers accurately within several weeks. While Katrina covered a much larger area and many more people were involved, how long do you think it should take to come up with a reasonably accurate and certain number of dead and missing?

Again, how much do you hear and read about this, 3 months later?

And again, how much do you hear about 9/11, 4 years and 3 months later?

And where was George Bush in both cases? And appropriate government agencies?

Does this raise the same questions with you that it does with me?

Friday, December 9th, 2005 How Many Are Missing and Dead After Katrina? Three Months After the Hurricane, the Numbers are Still Unknown

Questions still remain over how many people died after Hurricane Katrina as well as the whereabouts of all of the evacuees. The official death toll stands at about 1,300 but thousands of people are still reported missing. One newspaper reported the whereabouts of 6,600 people reported missing have not been determined. We speak with New Orleans evacuee Leah Hodges, who is still missing her brother, and Tina Susman, a Newsday reports the number of missing include over 1,300 children.

Officials with both groups say the numbers are so high in part because government record-keeping efforts haven't caught up with Katrina survivors who were separated from their families during the evacuations. Hurricane shelters had no coordinated system for feeding evacuees" names, birth dates and other information into a national database.

Democracy Now! report...