New Orleans Renews Search for the Missing (300 to 400?)

[UpInArms]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/02/AR2006030201386.html

NEW ORLEANS -- A full six months after Hurricane Katrina, officials renewed the search for bodies Thursday, moving slowly through ravaged neighborhoods with cadaver dogs in hopes of locating 300 to 400 people still unaccounted for.

The search teams targeted 160 houses and 122 debris piles at or near addresses of people still missing. The addresses were culled from a list of about 2,300 people still listed as unaccounted for with state and federal officials.

"We have between 300 and 400 people we can't find any record of since the storm," said Dr. Louis Cataldie, the state's medical examiner, who asked for the new searches. "There's no record in any database we can find of them getting a prescription filled, getting the lights turned on, anything. We're trying to find out what happened to them."

Searches after the storm in New Orleans and along the Gulf Coast turned up more than 1,000 dead in Louisiana and an additional 231 in Mississippi. In New Orleans, however, after some of the most severely damaged neighborhoods were reopened to residents, several families returned to wrecked homes to find bodies inside.

Now, as workers gear up to remove debris and demolish homes in parts of the city, the teams are checking once more for bodies.

...more...

[stillcool]

1. this is so sick....

...and the comparison to 9/11 is such a telling one. $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

[kath]

2. uh, 'splain it to me how "a list of about 2,300 people still listed as

as unaccounted for" magically gets reduced to "300 to 400".

Veddy interesting...

[Whoa_Nelly]

3. And where's the news about reuniting children with their families?

This seems to have been grossly ingnored, too.

If I had the money, would take the next year or more, and go to the gulf area just to record people's stories. It's going to be years before the story of this catastrophic failure of our government will be known, and even then, it won't be the entire story. :cry:

[RagingInMiami]

4. Renewed?

Why the hell did they stop in the first place with 2,300 people still unaccounted for?