Does anyone here know the death toll of Katrina off-hand? I bet a very few of you actually do know.
For the past few days I've been asking people if they knew the death toll for Katrina and if they knew the death toll for 9/11. 95% of people knew the number for 9/11 and almost no one even had a remote idea of how many people died in Katrina.
Its amazing what the media will beat into our minds and what they choose to hide!

Not so much that they would be trying to hide it. They just don't need to beat it in our heads as much because Katrina isn't something that can bring us into a war to make politicians richer. There's no enemy carrying out the attack. Therefore we can't get Americans angry enough to not see what's really going on.

Katrina's death toll = 1,836
Missing = 705

When all the scanners were reporting what they heard during Katrina on GLP they reported on vehicals not being able to move down the streets because of massive bodie piles. They reported of fighting (Gun exchange )between Civilians and non-civilians Basicly they reported everything the news media did and more and we didn't have to wait till 10 o'clock to hear about what happened at 6 o'clock. And they did not white wash or lie...when anyone tried to BS people they rest of the scanners chimed in and asked "where what" was heard because it didn't match everyone elses scanner.

The true death toll will never be known..Thats one reason not to talk about it.. And in this type of event a propagandist would want lower numbers to avoid national shame as opposed to the higher numbers generated for 911 to bolster patriotic Zeal....Personal I think the death toll for Katrina is higher than 911...somewhere between 4500 and 3000... I doubt the death toll exeeds 5000 but again, they burned the bodies before they were identified and/or counted....So the true death count will never be known...

[edit on 9-8-2007 by titorite]

Excellent point. The media can't stop talking about how many people died on 9/11 but I couldn't even begin to tell you how many died in Katrina.

I assume there is a reason for this effect.

I think all you guys summed it up pretty good, there really is no reason to talk about the death toll because nobody would benefit from it! Like norbin and titorite said, if anything the death toll is an embarrassment at how incompetent our emergency relief system is.

IF Al-Queda had a weather modification device then we would all know Katrina's death toll by heart!!

good points made in here. As a native of New Orleans, and a Katrina fleerer, I acknowledge I do not have an objective point of view. I live in San Antonio now but I still remember the events. All three levels of government failed. I wish the media would have dug further on certain issues as well.

As a New Orleanian, when you mention the # of dead I think of one death in particular, although there were so many. Just over 1,800 and hundreds not accounted for. Some do not want to be found, but I fear that number is very low.

There was a family stranded on their roof top, like so many others, and nightfall came. The family fell asleep and one of the babies rolled off the roof in her sleep. She was a two or three years old. She fell in the water and her parent's couldn't swim. They did find her body, if that's any consolation.

I know this to be a true story because one of my best friends was a nurse at a hospital located near the home and they could hear the screams of the family begging for someone to help them. Additionally, there was an aritcle in the paper about this child's drowning.

In closing, I would like to ask that you not believe everything in the newspapers, because much of it is hearsay and rumor. Those at fault are all three levels of government, Federal, State, and Local...every level, in that order; before, during, and after the storm.

If you didn't/don't live in New Orleans, you can never fully understand the magnitude of what happened here. The city of New Orleans itself, pre-Katrina, was just under 500 million. People fail to realize that the entire metro area is 1.5 million. You only saw what the media wanted you to see. Please remember that. I imagine that I'm rambling here, but I'm tired of trying to defend those elderly folks who couldn't leave and had no transportation, I'm tired of defending those disabled and in wheelchairs and had no way out, I'm tired of defending the one million of us who did evacuate, who didn't rob and/or look, and were kept from our homes and unemployed, living off our savings accounts for over a month, without knowing the extent of the damage to our own homes and lives.


There are too many stories that continue to break my heart, even today, two years after the storm has passed. I guess part of the reason is because even today, in many areas of the city, we continue to see a great deal of abandoned and damaged homes, with no hope or prospect of the owners ever returning. However, things are getting somewhat better and that's a good thing. Folks here are working hard to rebuild this city and the place we love and call home.

Correction: The city of New Orleans preKatrina was just under five hundred thousand, not five hundred million.

The vast majority of people who perished from Katrina were poor, uneducated and not part of the rich elite caste.........in other words they're lives, their numbers don't matter.

If Paris Hilton (Hilton Hotels) or one of Bush's daughters had been living there you better believe they would have had a convoy of helicopters to get them out sooner or military cargo planes dropping "care packages of food and water" days earlier.

The people of New Orleans were left to rot and the US Government arrogantly and in front of everyone ignored their plight. Nobody has made FEMA accountable for this astrosity.

Think it can't or won't happen to you..........if you're not one of the haves or have mores it could very well happen to you.

A friend of mine who works for the Human Society was sent down to New Orleans after Katrina hit. Their vehicle was stopped by military people and they were told they would have to wait 24 hours before being allowed through. Their identification was checked very closely and Marney felt "something was going on, something being hidden from the general public". She thinks the military was shooting wandering dogs and cats.

Again, I can't stress my eyes were opened wider watching how our government handled this issue.......very scary.