Shot In The Dark: Could Have Been Worse

September 09, 2005

Could Have Been Worse

I remember on September 11. I was out back at Flash's place. We were both dazed (I from the events of the day, he with that plus his day in court), pondering what the final toll might be. I'm paraphrasing from memory - but I'll stand by the idea.

"I bet there's 50,000 dead", said Flash.

"I dunno", I responded. "A lot of people got out of the second tower, and it looked like from the lower part of the first tower, too. I bet it's not much over 15-20,000."

"Really? You're pretty optimistic?"

I thought I was, anyway. When I heard later that "only" 3,000 had died, I was amazed, and grateful in a horrified way given the possibilities.

So, they say, in New Orleans.

Alarming predictions of as many as 10,000 dead in New Orleans may have been greatly exaggerated, with authorities saying Friday that the first street-by-street sweep of the swamped city revealed far fewer corpses than feared.

"Some of the catastrophic deaths that some people predicted may not have occurred," said Col. Terry Ebbert, the city's homeland security chief.

He declined to give a revised estimate. But he added: "Numbers so far are relatively minor as compared to the dire projections of 10,000."

The encouraging news came as authorities officially shifted most of their attention to counting and removing the dead after spending days cajoling, persuading and all but strong-arming the living into leaving the city because of the danger of fires and disease from the fetid floodwaters.

Good news, to be sure. Or at least less-bad news.

Posted by Mitch at September 9, 2005 04:42 PM | TrackBack

Comments

10,000 sounds familiar. Isn't that the number of Iraqi civilians allegedly killed by US forces? The number that, you may have noticed, has never changed. It was 10,000 dead over a year ago, and it's 10,000 dead today.

"10,000 dead" must be the arbitrary figure that the Left assigns to any act of God or man that they think they can hold George Bush responsible for. I would be suspicious any time that number comes up in the news. It sounds like some kind of media conspiracy.

Posted by: Dave in Pgh. at September 9, 2005 11:54 PM

I had the impression when it first came out that 10,000 figure was from Mayor Nagin, when he was still in full-throated "blame-Bush" mode and had the entire MSM fawning over him. At least that was my impression - "city officials," I seem to recall. But I'm cleaning my garage so I don't have time to go look it up ;)

Anyway, 10,000 was my prediction for 9/11. Glad I was wrong.

Posted by: Brian Jones at September 10, 2005 09:39 AM

The Lancet estimated several months ago that the deaths in Iraq numbered 100,000, not 10,000. Not sure how they arived at that number, but I know a young lady who went to Iraq to provide aid was being given numbers of dead by the commanders there but she suddenly died through a car-bombing. Too bad her time was cut short or maybe we'd have a better idea of the reality there.

Posted by: Teena at September 10, 2005 05:36 PM

Y'see, Teena, that's the problem people were talking about earlier in the week. You come out with these canards that have been gutted and staked out to die YEARS ago - like the bogus, endlessly-debunked Lancet article.

The Lancet article in question said that between 5,000 and 200,000 Iraqis died; the 100,000 figure came from picking a midline number. Credible sources put the figure between no more than 20-30,000, which is fewer people than Saddam would have killed in that same period had he been in power.

But no matter - the Lancet article gave figures with, essentially, a 90% margin of error; the media pulled a hard figure ad rectum .

Facts are pesky things.

Posted by: mitch at September 10, 2005 06:03 PM

Wait a minute, how can there be so few?

I know - the gov'mint is HIDING it! They're covering up massive casualties so people don't, you know, freak out at the size of the disaster.

Just like they did with Hurricane Andrew. And the Kennedy assasination. And . . . .
.

Posted by: nathan bissonette at September 12, 2005 08:51 AM