The press is taking some heat over the Katrina body count numbers. I don’t think it’s particularly fair as I don’t think the press was presenting numbers like 10,000 as anything close to accurate, but as a guess — a guess by government officials, and something of an upper bound. And there is certainly nothing wrong with reporting the quantities of body bags being requested by local and state authorities. I suppose I’m a naturaly happy guy, so I’m happy that the body count is low so far. I have no idea what the final number will be, and I’m not sure that we’ll ever have a count accurate to the last dead person.
But I also think it’s a bit premature to use the number so far to predict the final count. The other day while watching cable news I saw a feature from a reporter who was riding along with one of the teams sent out by boat to search in New Orleans for the dead and the living. They pulled up to a flooded house, knocked out a window, yelled inside in case there were survivors, and then sniffed inside to try to see if there were any dead bodies inside. Simple but effective, I suppose. Then they spray painted the side of the house to annotate their findings. The team told the reporter that they would have to actually physically search the building later when flood waters receded to make sure there were no dead bodies in the building. There’s something to look forward to.
