Victims

Did you read that there is no official list of the people Katarina killed? There is no official list for many reasons. Several coroners in Lousiana parishes [counties] revealed lists of those who died in their parishes, but Orleans Parish, did not due to concerns over family privacy. Other reasons for the lack of a list include the difficulty of the task-many people may have died from Katrina-related causes months after Katrina. The Louisiana Historical Society President says there must be an official list, even if it is not published, just for historical purposes. Some groups have gathered many names, one list can be found at the Earth Institute's web site at www.katrinalist.columbia.edu That list has the number that died at 1,295 and the number of missing at 595. [Source: Official list of victims of an American disaster untabluated by Laura Maggi The Times Picayune, August 30, 2007]
What do you think about this? Is the exact number of people killed important? Do you get a sense of this number of fatalities when you are reading the Great Deluge?