Has Anybody Here Seen My Old Friend...? 5,000 Katrina Missing (9KidPics)

[IndyOp]

Holidays are upon us and Katrina families are mourning more than their lost homes and communities. We are almost FOUR MONTHS "past" Katrina. Nearly 5,000 adults and over 678 children are still listed as missing. WHERE ARE THEY!?!?

Bryson


Izale


Jalece


Jeremy


Kendrell


Christian


Loydrall


Rockelle


Gino


Looking at the missing lists again, and looking at these faces, has motivated me to look again at my budget and dig deeper to donate Gulf Coast organizations and to ask myself, again: HOW DO WE GET THE MEDIA TO COVER THIS UNTIL IT IS RESOLVED, until we know that families have been reunited or informed of their loved one's death?

National Center for Missing Children has a downloadable excel file, still 678 children listed.

National Center for Missing Adults has a downloadable pdf file, still over 4,900 adults listed.

[Bunny]

1. Look at those adorable little faces. Their families must be sick

with worry. :cry:

[BJW]

26. the numbers of actual "missing" children is very low

These "missing" reports are ones primarily filed by parents who are non-custodial, and who didn't have much contact, if any, with their children before Katrina hit, and haven't had contact with them since then. Because they are on this list it doesn't mean that they met with foul play, or died in Katrina, or in the aftermath. What it does mean is that there has been disruption in family communications, intentional or otherwise.

[Bunny]

27. How do you know this? Do you have a link?

[BJW]

28. There were several news stories on this topic

done back in mid-October.

[LynzM]

2. I cannot imagine.....

How awful to not know where your child is... :cry: How is there not some sort of running media of the missing?!

[babylonsister]

3. Rec'd! Thanks, IO; we can't let this drop!

Katrina info needs to be shared daily. Sadly, I imagine many of these darling kids will never be found one way or the other. :(

[TallahasseeGrannie]

4. Why is this not the leading news story every single night?

911 led all news for years and the numbers of 1/3 of these potential numbers. Even if these people are alive, this represents an enormous upheaval.

[kliljedahl]

8. Why not?

Most of them are not blond white cheerleaders, it's very simple. What hypocrisy!



Keith’s Barbeque Central

[proud2BlibKansan]

18. We got a flyer at school a week or so ago

So SOMEONE is following up on this. But I agree, it should be on the news every night.

[Kurovski]

19. It's not leading the news precisely because of 9/11--

the official death toll in Katrina will never go past 3,000 lest America realizes and begins to discuss that Bush's own negligence resulted in more deaths than the terrorist attacks on 9/11.

Looking at those photographs is heartbreaking. How human beings endure that kind of anguish is one of the phenomena of existence.

[wndycty]

32. Because Natalie Holloway is still missing. . .

. . .we can't take our mind away from the Natalie Holloway case to deal with this <sarcasm>.

[melody]

5. those poor babies :((

The bastards don't give a damn where they are -- the people themselves will have to seek them out and find them.
This administration only cares about "life" when it's an embryo. They don't give a damn about real children.

[ScreamingMeemie]

6. I think we have a DU Activist Corps task here.

I am sick. :(

[LittleClarkie]

9. Indeed. Pick a day, and flood Congress with calls

asking what is being done about the missing.

I don't think this administration wants them found, as they'd have to admit the death toll was way, way higher than they want people to know.

[az chela]

7. WHY WHY WHY????

Why isnt this mentioned on the news or in the papers???Are these lives worth nothing because they are black or poor??
Who is going to answer for this???
Bush raises millions for his worthless friends and cant raise the money to find these kids???Their pictures should be on the news every night

[Cults4Bush]

15. Your words should be on the news every night.

It is disgusting.... we have to get the public active. If not then tensions are just gonna explode. They've turned Katrina from a national tragedy into a national powder keg. I don't know how much longer people are gonna take this shit but me thinks that when the credit card bills hit in January people are gonna be ripe for a good ol' angering.

Oh and check your PMs. ;)

[bettyellen]

10. USA put the total at 6,644 just 3 weeks ago. Newsweek says 1,300 kids...

e whereabouts of 6,644 people reported missing after Hurricane Katrina have not been determined, raising the prospect that the death toll could be higher than the 1,306 recorded so far in Louisiana and Mississippi, according to two groups working with the federal government to account for victims.
....snip....
Pasqualini says those counting the victims are particularly concerned about an estimated 1,300 unaccounted-for people who lived in areas that were heavily damaged by Katrina, or who were disabled at the time the storm hit. The fact that authorities haven't been able to determine what happened to them suggests that the death toll from Katrina could climb significantly.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-11-21-katrina-missing_x.htm?POE=NEWISVA


Post-Katrina, kids still lost
The fate of more than 1,300 children remains unknown months after Hurricane Katrina hit

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/ny-uskids1204,0,8331.story?coll=ny-nation-big-pix

[IndyOp]

11. Thanks for these --

I saw both articles - I am relieved to see that the story is getting coverage. I have been watching the National Center's numbers for the last 10 weeks - I think they are very reliable lists.

[bettyellen]

13. thanks for the OP, it broke my heart Monday to read of Toni Jackson and

her husband finallly being found. And the poor old man the day before. In their own living rooms in homes that were said to be searched.

[FreedomAngel82]

12. How did these children get seperated from their parent(s)??

I just don't understand that.

[bettyellen]

14. you assume the parents stayed at home and didn't have to work,

or that they are still even alive.
Kids were taken away to rescue and parents left behind on rooftops. Parents put their kids on boats and had to stay behind.
Kids were found alive surrounded by the dead.
Amazing the impulse remains to blame the victims even here. Just be grateful that you have the resources to never have this happen to you, but try to be kind to all those who didn't.

[IndyOp]

16. Some children must have drowned with one/both parent(s)

- and it is the other parent or another relative that has listed both child and parent(s) missing.

Many, many families got separated - in the flood waters and during rescues.

The Love family was told that they had to choose whether to put their children on the helicopter or not -- the adults could not go. The family had been stuck on the roof for days and the parents made the decision to do what they thought would ensure that their children would live. They put their children on the copter and told 5-year-old Diamonte to look out after the little ones. Diamonte was found wandering in NOLA without supervision, 5 preschoolers walking/toddling after him. The parents had, in the meantime, been rescued and forced on transportation that took them out of state and were frantic to find their kids. Diamonte and the other children were fine - what about other unsupervised children that were separated from their families? It seems likely to me that other children who were separated from their families may not have made it.

What about parents that may have left their children in a location, with people who they thought would be able to keep their children safe, but then could not get back to them and found out that that something had gone wrong there?

One man was holding onto his wife in the flood waters and she told him to let her go - he could not hold her and she did not want them both to drown. A parent holding onto their child in the water might have lost their grip - that child is missing. Presumed dead and missing.

[BJW]

25. many of these "missing" reports

are filed by parents who are non-custodial, and who didn't have much contact, if any, with their children before Katrina hit, and haven't had contact with them since then. Because they are on this list it doesn't mean that they met with foul play, or died in Katrina, or in the aftermath. What it does mean is that there has been disruption in family communications, intentional or otherwise.

[MountainLaurel]

37. In some cases

The National Guard evacuated the children to a particular location, telling the parents they would be next, and then they didn't come back, or the parents were taken to a different place.

[proud2BlibKansan]

17. Kicked and recommended

[bvar22]

20. Heartbreaking....

[tblue37]

21. Do you have any idea

how I might locate a friend from Mississippi?

She emailed me some time after Katrina and told me she had lost everyting (including her 8-year-old cat). Sicne then I have not heard from her. I send out hopeful emails frequently, but have never gotten another resposne. I am very worried about her. She had a heart attack last yeeyar, and this stress can't be helping her high blood pressure.

[Kurovski]

22. tblue37, if you get no response on this thread you might want to

start a thread of your own asking DUer's if they know of any information sites that might be of help.

You might want to try googling the name of your friend to see if she is on a list?

[IndyOp]

30. Tblue - you might try;

Katrina List - online database
http://www.katrinalist.net/

Operation Katrina Connect - people who will help you search
<http://www.operationconnectkatrina.com/>

I contacted Operation Katrina Connect on behalf of a student who could not locate her sister after the hurricane -- they were very nice. My student's sister reappeared before they could start searching, but they sounded like they had a lot of experience and could have been very helpful.

Best wishes! IndyOp

[tblue37]

38. Thanks. I will try that.

I am afraid I might never hear from her again. We never met in person, but we corresponded regularly by email for 4 years. I have many online websites, and she originally contacted me after reading some of my articles. We became online friends, bonding over our love for ferrets.

I am just worried sick about her.

[K8-EEE]

23. I Want To Mention Barry Cowsill

His family is frantic too. You can read about Barry's disappearance here at the Cowsill site.

http://cowsill.com/cowsills/news.html

The most unbelievable thing to me is how quickly an entire American city just faded away from our national consciousness. It's weird. You never hear anything about the missing people from NOLA any more.

[me b zola]

24. Shame on US

But hey, at least we are boycotting Aruba.

</sarcasm>

[BuelahWitch]

29. Two weeks ago I talked to my NO friend who was on the missing list

I told her that I was worried because she wasn't on the survivor's list, and that someone had posted at one of the Katrina sites that she was missing. She asked me, "WHAT survivor's list?" She had no idea there was such a thing. Incidentally, I was able to get hold of her because a friend of a friend had her cell number. I left a message a few weeks ago and she only got to call me back the day after Thanksgiving. That's because during the week she lives in Baton Rouge where it's closer to work and on the weekends she goes "home" to NO. She, her boyfriend and her 16 year old dog are fine.

I PRAY that there are alot of people listed as "missing" who really are not, and are not aware that there are survivor's lists. PJ is a pretty smart, savvy woman, and if she was not aware of it, there's a good chance others are not as well.

[Wind Dancer]

31. Amy Goodman is doing a 2 part special on the missing.

It's well worth watching - 1st part was on Friday and will be continued Monday. She talks to a journalist investigating the unorganized way the government has treated the missing, unlike 9/11 victims.

AMY GOODMAN: The official death toll stands at about 1,300, but thousands of people are still reported missing. Two weeks ago, USA Today reported the whereabouts of 6,600 people have not been determined. 6,600 people missing or dead. And this past weekend, Newsday reported the missing includes 1,300 children. The reports are based on figures provided by two groups: the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and the National Center for Missing Adults. Officials with both groups say the numbers are so high, in part because government record-keeping efforts haven’t caught up with Katrina survivors who were separated from their families during the evacuations. Hurricane shelters had no coordinated system for feeding evacuees’ names, birthdates and other information into a national database.

To discuss this, we're joined in Atlanta by Leah Hodges, yes, who testified in Washington at the hearing on Katrina, former resident of New Orleans, living in Atlanta right now. She is still missing her brother. We're also joined in our New York studio by Tina Susman, who is a reporter with Newsday. She recently returned to New Orleans. Her article, “Looking for the Lost: The Search for Children Scattered by Katrina” appeared in Sunday's newspaper. We welcome you both to Democracy Now!
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/12/09/1444207

[Viva_La_Revolution]

34. Thanks... watching now..

:)

[Wind Dancer]

35. Leah Hodges was one of the woman

that spoke during the congressional hearings chaired by Cynthia McKinney.

Children were separated from their parents, put on buses without any means of reuniting with family members. It's still a nightmare for family members trying to locate the missing. The media could help solve this problem yet they continue to ignore this entire situation. This is heartbreaking and should never have happened.

[IndyOp]

36. Thank You -- Amy Goodman & DemocracyNow! - Priceless! (nt)

[malaise]

33. This is too sad

Where are these babies. Can you imagine the pain this is causing for their families