Katrina death toll swells to 372

2005-09-10 21:08

Louisiana - The official death toll from Hurricane Katrina has risen to at least 372, with 154 confirmed dead in and around the flooded city of New Orleans, officials said on Saturday.

"At this time, officials working in conjunction with coroners from local parishes have confirmed 154 deaths," the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals said, raising Thursday's state toll from 118.

The death toll in Mississippi rose to 211 on Saturday from 204, according to the state's Emergency Management Agency, bringing the total toll in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida to 372.

Officials estimated last week that Katrina could have killed up to 10 000 people in New Orleans, but officials in the city, which is still largely covered by putrid waters concealing a harvest of corpses, said on Friday that the toll could be far lower than expected.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has 25 000 body bags on hand in Louisiana to cope with the possibility of a massive death toll following one of America's worst natural disasters, state officials revealed on Wednesday.

But the process of recovering bodies from flooded areas, confirming they are indeed victims of Katrina and logging them into morgues is a painstaking and time-consuming one, resulting in a lag between the actual and official death tolls.

Ninety of the Louisiana bodies are in a massive emergency morgue in the Louisiana town of St Gabriel, and 25 are in a coroner's office in the New Orleans-area parish of Jefferson, the state health officials said.

Another 33 victims are in the custody of an international body recovery firm contracted by Louisiana officials.

- AFP