As the 1-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina looms, the death toll from the Hurricane has taken a serious drop, as Louisiana has apparently weeded out many of the out of state deaths in a short post-Hurricane period as not related to the Hurricane. As of August 2, the death toll has dropped from 1,836 to 1,723, a drop of 113 deaths.
Previously, Louisiana had listed 1,577 deaths as being due to the hurricane. That included 480 out of state deaths and 1,097 deaths in Louisiana. The out of state number has now been reduced to 346 deaths, a drop of 134 deaths. A graphic showing the out of state deaths by state is here.
The Louisiana total has increased to 1,118, an increase of 21 deaths. So, between May 18 and August 2, a period of 10 weeks, an additional 21 deaths were recorded in Louisiana itself, which is pretty amazing.
On August 1, only a month ago, another body, or more correctly a skeleton, was found after firefighters smashed down the door of a home filled with debris. Officials were alerted by a man who said his mother's body may still be in the home.
There are only 23 bodies that have not yet been identified. That is a reduction from 49 bodies on July 6 and shows excellent progress is being made in body identification.
The total for Louisiana has dropped to 1,464 deaths.
There are still 135 people missing from the storm. That number has not changed much in the past month or two. Although many missing continued to be found up until a few months ago, at this late date, I fear that many of the missing are probably dead. One wonders at what point the missing are simply assumed to be dead.
In a serious case of bureaucratic failure, the official missing list for Louisiana has not been updated since February 2, and still contains the names of 2,371 people. That list seriously needs to be updated.
I tried to call the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals to ask them about this situation, but the woman who answered the phone did not seem to be able to even understand my question. I understand that there are Americans who do not have very high IQ's, and that is not their fault. But must they be employed by state agencies to deal with the public?
At this point, I am giving up but some enterprising researcher really ought to follow up on this with a phone call to the the Department above and ask them when they are going to update their missing list, if ever.
Reportedly, over 99% of the Louisiana Hurricane Katrina missing persons cases were resolved in one way or another. However, I have received communications from persons working with the families of missing persons in Louisiana who claim that there are still 1000's of persons looking for missing loved ones from this storm.
We are going to continue to give Mississippi 238 deaths, until they can publish an official number, or list the dead, or do something responsible about this figure. There continue to be issues with the Mississippi death toll. For one fascinating example, see this weather blog here, in particular the comments by "squeak", Jeff Stang and "BenRMac":
"squeak's comments:
In the obits in the MS Press and Sun Herald, in the weeks after the storm, there were many older people who passed away in that time frame, and even though it was not on the day the hurricane hit, but after, I assumed that a number of these deaths were indirectly related to the hurricane. It seems appropriate that these be noted, but counted as a separate statistic.BenRMac's comments:
...I spent a couple months with the Hands On group working down there, and it was simply overwhelming to see the scale of damage. I want to ask you about a story that I heard while working with the animal shelter there, the one that used to be north of the airport but is now relocated. One of the people that lived there was telling us stories about the days after the storm, and she said that she saw hundreds of bodies laid out in parking lots and other areas by recovery workers.Jeff Stang's comments:
She said that the "official" totals for MS are bullshit, and that many, many more died there. She did seem to be a little overenthusiastic and also traumatized, but I do have to agree after seeing the scale of damage that the official numbers seem awfully low. With the sheer number of homes and apartment complexes that just disappeared on the 70+ miles of coast, I would have expected much more...
Along the MS Gulf Coast, there is a large Vietnamese community. These guys (and sometimes the entire family) will ride out a storm on their shrimp boats. There were many dead on the Industrial Canal in Gulfport yet none are listed in the Sun Herald's death toll list. The most obvious reason for this is that many old timers in the Vietnamese community (because of Communism) do not trust the government, they "fly under the radar".Regarding squeak's comments about the stress and aftereffects of the storm causing excessive deaths, there does not seem to be much we can do. Governor Haley Barbour is a corrupt pol who is close to the ultra-corrupt US President George Bush.
Most do not speak English, even after being here since '75. The kids translate for them. Anyway, there was not one name listed as dead and yet there were many reports of people finding entire families dead on submerged shrimp boats. The authorities will never truly know the true death numbers.
Unlike Louisiana, Mississippi apparently did not want to count deaths that were caused by the aftermath of the storm, especially stress exacerbating pre-existing conditions. However, if an enterprising investigator could get a hold of back issues of the Sun Herald and the Mississippi Press, they could compare the death rates post-storm to the norm for the region. The excess could reasonably be concluded to be due to the storm.
BenRMac's comments are largely anecdotal, but it might be nice if a reporter or investigator could go down there and at least get some witnesses on record about "hundreds of bodies", etc.
Jeff Strang's comments about a supposed large number of dead amongst Vietnamese shrimpers, who failed to record these deaths with the state, is more interesting. Since many of these families still speak only Vietnamese, the investigator would need an interpreter.
The fact that a large number of these Vietnamese deaths supposedly occurred on Industrial Canal in Gulfport means that that street would be a good place to start looking. I don't have the means or desire to go down there, so maybe some other investigator could pick up the ball here. It looks like there may be a story here that remains to be written.
For what it's worth, Seth Abramson, an attorney/poet blogger, has been hammering away at the discrepancies in Mississippi's death toll for some time now, making various allegations that Haley Barbour is hiding the real death toll in Mississippi.
It is true that the suicide rate in New Orleans went up after Hurricane Katrina for a number of months, but the only figures available are per 1000,000 population figures, and until we can determine the population of New Orleans month by month post-Katrina, there is no way to figure out what that number is.
I do not believe that the suicide increase has been figured into the totals and it is presently beyond my capability to do that. That is a job that I am going to hand off to a more willing statistician.
As the 1-year anniversary of this terrible storm approaches, it is helpful to look at a couple of overviews of what Hurricane Katrina actually was. First, a timeline, and then a fact sheet (both the timeline and the fact sheet are from the producers of Surviving Katrina, a promising documentary directed by Phil Craig and produced by the Discovery Channel. This film will be showing on August 27 at 9 PM across the US:
Timeline
Tuesday, August 23, 2005
Hurricane Katrina starts forming over the Bahamas and is identified by the National Hurricane Centre at 5 PM as Tropical Depression 12.
Wednesday, August 24
Tropical Depression 12 strengthens into a tropical storm and is named Katrina.
Thursday, August 25
Katrina strikes Florida as a Category 1 hurricane with winds of 80 MPH.
Long-range forecasting predicts Katrina will make landfall in the Florida Panhandle, well to the East of New Orleans. It is expected that Katrina will move immediately in a northward direction.
Friday, August 26
At 5 PM, Hurricane Katrina moves into the Gulf of Mexico and quickly grows into a category 2 hurricane with 100 MPH winds. As Hurricane Katrina enters the Gulf of Mexico conditions are perfect for a hurricane to rapidly intensify:
1) Warm ocean temperatures
2) Moist atmospheric conditions
3) A lack of wind sheer (winds that disrupt the motion of a storm)
High pressures over the Gulf drive Katrina further west. Katrina is moving in a westerly direction and the National Hurricane Center forecast track shifts towards New Orleans. The Florida Panhandle is no longer in Katrina’s sights and landfall is now expected somewhere in Mississippi or Louisiana.
Saturday, August 27
At 4 AM, Katrina is now a Category 3 storm and continues to move in a westerly direction. Katrina also continues to rapidly intensify due to the sustained conditions for hurricane growth in the Gulf of Mexico.
The hurricane forecast track has Katrina moving northwest over the next 24 hours towards New Orleans at a speed of 7 MPH. Katrina is roughly 435 miles south of the Mississippi River.
A Category 5 hurricane is a very rare occurrence; typically we only see one every two years in the Atlantic. Conditions in recent years, however, have been ideal for the fueling of massive Category 5 hurricanes.
Sunday, August 28
At 1 AM, Katrina is upgraded to a Category 4 hurricane with winds of 145 MPH. Six hours later, Katrina is upgraded to a Category 5 hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 160 MPH.
The National Weather Service issues this Advisory at 7 AM:
A Hurricane Warning is in effect for the north central gulf coast from Morgan City, Louisiana eastward to the Alabama/Florida border…including the City of New Orleans and Lake Pontchartrain…preparations to protect life and property should be rushed to completion.At 4 PM, the National Weather Service continues to update on the potential threat to New Orleans and the Gulf Coast from storm surge:
Coastal storm surge flooding of 18 to 22 feet above normal tide levels…locally as high as 28 feet…along with large and dangerous battering waves…can be expected near and to the east of where the center makes landfall. Some levees in New Orleans area could be overtopped. Significant storm surge will occur elsewhere along the central and northeastern Gulf of Mexico Coast.Monday, August 29
In the early hours of Monday morning, Katrina begins to weaken and by 2 AM is already classed by the National Weather Service as a Category 4 storm.
At 5 AM, one hour before Katrina’s first landfall, Katrina’s associated storm surge begins to cross Lake Borgne from the Gulf of Mexico and starts to batter the eastern flood defenses of Greater New Orleans. The storm surge is also carried towards the city’s Industrial Canal and Lake Pontchartrain along the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway.
Storm surge heights at landfall peaked at around 25 feet as they came ashore – the largest recorded in U.S. history – breaking the previous record set by Hurricane Camille in 1969. Storm surges can be the most devastating part of a hurricane and in Katrina’s case, the storm surges proved much more destructive than the hurricane winds.
Hurricane Katrina makes landfall over the Mississippi Delta as a near Category 4 storm and then makes another landfall on the Mississippi-Louisiana border as a Category 3 hurricane. Hurricane Katrina’s core winds hit the Mississippi Coast and New Orleans experiences the weaker winds on the western side of Katrina.
These winds, moving from the North to the South, create a second storm surge on Lake Pontchartrain – about 11 feet high – which races towards the northern flood defenses of the city, ultimately leading to the breaches in the 17th Street and London Avenue drainage canals that flood Metropolitan New Orleans.
By 2 PM Katrina has weakened to a Category 2 storm as it continues to move inland. By Tuesday, Katrina weakens to a tropical depression.
Hurricane Katrina Fact Sheet
Hurricane Katrina was one of the deadliest hurricanes in the history of the United States, killing over 1,700 people.
- The confirmed death toll (total of direct and indirect deaths) stood at 1,723, mainly from Louisiana (1,464) and Mississippi (238). However, 135 people remain categorized as missing in Louisiana, so this number is not final. Many of the deaths are indirect. It is almost impossible to determine the exact cause of some of the fatalities.
- Katrina was the largest hurricane of its strength to approach the United States in recorded history; its sheer size caused devastation over 100 miles (160 km) from the center. The storm surge caused major or catastrophic damage along the coastlines of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, including the cities of Mobile, Alabama, Biloxi and Gulfport, Mississippi, and Slidell, Louisiana.
- Katrina was the eleventh named storm, the fifth hurricane, the third major hurricane, and the second category 5 hurricane of the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season. It was also the sixth strongest hurricane ever recorded, and the third strongest landfalling U.S. hurricane ever recorded.
- New Orleans' levee failures were found to be primarily the result of system design flaws, combined with the lack of adequate maintenance. According to an investigation by the National Science Foundation, those responsible for the conception, design, construction, and maintenance of the region's flood-control system apparently failed to pay sufficient attention to public safety.
- Hurricane Katrina was the costliest hurricane in U.S. history, with estimated damages resulting in $75 billion (in 2005 US dollars).
- As of April 2006, the Bush Administration has sought $105 billion for repairs and reconstruction in the region. This does not account for damage to the economy caused by potential interruption of the oil supply and exports of commodities such as grain.
- More than seventy countries pledged monetary donations or other assistance. Kuwait made the largest single pledge, $500 million; other large donations were made by Qatar ($100 million), India, China (both $5 million), Pakistan ($1.5 million), and Bangladesh ($1 million).
- The total shut-in oil production from the Gulf of Mexico in the six-month period following the hurricane was approximately 24% of the annual production and the shut-in gas production for the same period was about 18%.
- The forestry industry in Mississippi was also affected, as 1.3 million acres of forest lands were destroyed. The total loss to the forestry industry due to Katrina is calculated to rise to about $5 billion.
- Hundreds of thousands of local residents were left unemployed, which will have a trickle-down effect as lower taxes are paid to local governments. Before the hurricane, the region supported approximately one million non-farm jobs, with 600,000 of them in New Orleans. It is estimated that the total economic impact in Louisiana and Mississippi may exceed $150 billion.
- The American Red Cross, Salvation Army, Habitat for Humanity, Common Ground Collective, Emergency Communities, and many other charitable organizations provided housing, food, and water to victims of the storm. These organizations also provided an infrastructure for shelters throughout Louisiana and other states that held thousands of refugees.
Louisiana: Mon., Aug. 2, 2006: 1,464Footnoted totals are controversial. Explanations for controversial totals follows:
Mississippi: Tue., Jan. 24, 2006: 238
Florida: Mon., Jan. 9, 2006: 14
Georgia: Mon., Jan. 9, 2006: 2
Alabama: Mon., Jan. 9, 2006: 2
Ohio1: Wed., Aug. 31, 2005: 2
Kentucky2: Wed., Aug. 31, 2005: 1
Total: 1,723
1The two Ohio victims are Cassondra Ground, 19, of Monroeville, Ohio, and Thelma Niedzinski, 84, of Norwalk, Ohio. Both were killed in a car accident near Monroeville, Ohio on August 30, 2005. The Ohio State Highway Patrol felt that a wet road caused by Hurricane Katrina caused the car accident. See Ohioans Focus on Helping Katrina Victims, Jay Cohen, Associated Press, August 31, 2005.
2The Kentucky victim was Deanna Petsch, 10, of Hopkinsville, Kentucky. On August 29, 2005, she fell into a Hurricane Katrina-swollen ditch in Hopkinsville and drowned. See Storm Surge: State Gets Soaked, City Avoids Major Flooding, Homes, Life Lost in Hopkinsville, Sheldon S. Shafer and James Malone, The Louisville (Kentucky) Courier-Journal, August 31, 2005.
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