Friday, September 09, 2005

Katrina death toll may be lower than feared

Last evening blogger Bob Owens at Confederate Yankee predicted the death toll from Katrina would be lower than feared. He based his prediction on the number and location of bodies recovered so far; and comparisons with death totals for some previous natural disasters.

It looks like Bob called it right.

The AP has just reported that during the first systematic sweep of the city, authorities in New Orleans:

found far fewer bodies than expected, suggesting that Hurricane Katrina's death toll may not be the catastrophic 10,000 feared.

"I think there's some encouragement in what we've found in the initial sweeps that some of the catastrophic deaths that some people predicted may not have occurred," said Terry Ebbert, New Orleans' homeland security chief.
<...>
The sweep was carried out by the Police Department, the Army's 82nd Airborne Division and the National Guard, and covered every part of the city reachable by land, boat or air.

"Numbers so far are relatively minor as compared to the dire projections of 10,000," Ebbert said.

That's sure very good news.

Take a look at Bob's post. It's a fine example of using current and historical data to reach a reasoned conclusion.

2 comments:

Barry said...

John,

Great Post! Sure hope they are right.

BTW: I posted my thoughts on my blog with somewhat of an explanation for my absense and a thanks to you at the end. Thanks for checking on me. I didn't see any template problems other than the fact I hadn't been posting lately.

Anonymous said...

I knew it was going to be lower because the Mayor and Gov. both predicted such a high number.

Heck, they were wrong about every other dang thing.

-AC