Where are the 4,000 missing Americans in Haiti?

[Poll_Blind]

This shocking story is from the Huffington Post, by Jose Antonio Vargas:

"Why are we not in shock that 4,000 US citizens are missing in Haiti? Why is this story underreported?"

That was the message Andrew Rasiej tweeted his followers Friday night. He was watching a quick news report that mentioned the 4,000 statistic while riding a cab; segments from the local ABC News affiliate are played inside cabs here in New York City. He searched and searched for more stories on missing Americans online but couldn't find any.

"If 4,000 Americans were under the rubble in some American city, people in the U.S. would be up in arms," Rasiej told HuffPostTech in a phone interview. Founder of the annual tech/pol conference Personal Democracy Forum, he's one of the foremost thinkers in the intersection of tech and politics. A few weeks ago, Rasiej attended a small dinner hosted by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that included the likes of Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Twitter founder Jack Dorsey.

--SNIP--

For the record, 2,973 victims and 19 hijackers died from the Sept. 11th attacks. So far, more than 170,000 Haitians have died from the earthquake, and the death toll is estimated to reach as high as 200,000. According to reports, at least 1 million are homeless.

Nearly three weeks after Haiti's devastating earthquake, the U.S. State Department is still looking for 4,000 American citizens. Many of them might have died, some perhaps still missing, others may have been already found. During past natural disasters such as the Indonesian tsunami, relatives of missing Americans contacted the State Department to report their missing loved ones. Once the missing were found, however, some relatives did not call back to update the State Department of their status. That may be the case for some of the missing American citizens in Haiti. But only some.

Laura Tischler, a State Department spokesperson, would not speculate on the status of the 4,000 missing Americans.

More at the link, above. Very troubling and thought-provoking story about how even major news can have important details massaged out of coverage entirely.

PB

[hlthe2b]

1. Does not make sense... If there were that many missing...

Wouldn't their friends/families/colleagues be pounding the US media for answers? Of course they would. Perhaps, just perhaps, the majority of the "missing" are really not missing, but have failed to check in?

I just don't buy that the news media is covering up such a major issue, if true. :shrug:

[karynnj]

6. Do you remember the anger some showed to the MA man who was on TV

demanding help saving his daughter, who went there with her FL university. That family and the other family with Congressman McGovern, who was a family plan actually went to Haiti and saw how impossible the situation was. Senator Kerry also helped with those arrangements and visited the family this weekend in MA. That was a story with several young college girls - the type of story that usually would get the most attention.

You saw the footage on TV, but that shows the severity but not the full extent of the damage. In a hearing before the SFRC, the experts said that about 75% of Porto Prince will need to be completely bulldozed because so much is beyond repair. They said that it was the worst natural disaster in the western hemisphere in over 100 years. The other problem was this was the center of government - and all most of those buildings were destroyed.

[hlthe2b]

8. Oh, I don't at all doubt of the extent of the carnage...the losses

200,000 seems a low estimate of total deaths overall. I just question why local news outlets (that thrives on finding local angles to national/international stories) are not going 24/7 on missing Americans in Haiti if there are so many unaccounted for. It may well be true and just lost amidst the magnitude and horror of the overall tragedy, but it just seems very incongruous. Granted national media picked up on the college girls, but why not on the other thousands? In industrial countries like the US, there is tremendous demand, not only to recover remains for the families, but to document the death for multiple legal reasons... So, that would seem to result in lots of pressure for the media to cover these stories on the magnitude of missing Americans (and Europeans, for that matter). Perhaps the media is being sensitive (for once) to not suggesting American lives are more important than Haiti nationals?

[NoPasaran]

2. If we knew where they were, they wouldn't be missing, would they?

[cutlassmama]

19. LOL, good point. More than likely, they are dead an no one wants to be

the first to say it.

[jberryhill]

3. Under-Reported

For one thing, the news stories along the lines of "Two hundred killed in disaster someplace, but thankfully no Americans among the dead" always strike me as odd.

As the story itself mentions, it's not clear where he got the 4000 figure from in the first place. If, as also explained, that was concerned others calling the State Department because they *might* know someone in Haiti, then of course nobody calls back to say everything's okay.

The second thing that leaps to mind is that this is a disaster of unprecedented scale. What is the expectation here? That amid everything else going on, some A-Team is going to be dispatched to Haiti to round up Americans and/or their remains?

Maybe I'm callous, but a disaster isn't made any larger or smaller by the proportion of Americans involved, and simply being an American doesn't get one to the front of the line in terms of numbers of loved ones affected or some "importance" of one's demise.

If I had an immediate family member in Haiti at the time, and if enough time goes by with no contact, then I'd have a pretty good idea what happened to them, since Americans have no special ability to avoid being killed in a disaster. Obviously, any living Americans in Haiti will present themselves to an appropriate authority, or be identified as such at the earliest opportunity.

But I'm genuinely confused about what's not being "reported", or what the expectation is.

[Poll_Blind]

4. The media myopia you mention in your first sentence seems to be....

...endemic to most media around the world. As for the rest of it, it appears that the State Department supported the author's claims but the piece could have been written more clearly. I don't think anyone's disputing the 4,000 figure. If you can point to something contrary I'd be interested in seeing it because I did find it amazing that with all the coverage of the situation in general, there wasn't any mention (that I heard) of a tally of Americans who have still not been accounted for.

Given the geography of the area, they're almost certainly in Haiti or the Dominican Republic.

I think the expectation is that, barring some special effort by the United States to help the potential victims of the earthquake, physically, that news of so many Americans still unaccounted for would be worthy of note in the popular media.

Those people who the State Department tracks have almost certainly at one time or another checked in with the Embassy. This would seem to be pretty standard behavior (especially for expats) and would include contact and address information for those registering.

PB

[jberryhill]

21. I know what you mean....

...and I'll go with the "question of scale" as to why we don't hear the usual "zillions dead, but only three Americans, thank God!"

[Posteritatis]

15. My "favorite" such odd coverage...

Was several years back, when CNN was talking about how a cat-3 hurricane was turning northeast towards, well, my coastal Canadian city, "leaving thousands of relieved coastal residents in its wake." Thanks, guys!

(Of course, CNN still reports Canada's capital as Toronto regularly, so I don't expect 'em to have much of a clue in general this way..)

[jberryhill]

20. It's not Toronto?

Oh, that's right, I forgot. Canada doesn't have a capital, because technically it's not a country.

[Blue Owl]

5. Because these 4,000 weren't advancing a PNAC agenda

That's why.

Same with the 40,000+ uninsured who die every year, or the 200,000+ who are killed from big pharma drugs -- their deaths can't be exploited for profit.

[malaise]

7. When 170,000 Haitians are already dead

and people are expecting the Haitian death toll to pass 200,000, 4,000 is a very small number. There were about 45,000 Americans in Haiti the afternoon of the quake. Word is that more than a few are still missing.

I don't find the story shocking - we all know there was a catastrophic earthquake in Port-au-Prince.

[ddeclue]

9. Because they are black and Haitian Americans?

:shrug:

Too bad they weren't all blonde white hot girls or Nancy Grace would never leave the airwaves on Haiti..we could come back in three years and she'd still be talking about them..

:eyes:

[Truth2Tell]

13. My first thought too.

My bet is that most of those 4000 are black, dual-citizens, and/or full time residents of Haiti. Many of the businesses in Port au Prince were/are owned by Haitian-Americans who split their time between the two countries.

[Rebubula]

17. Geez

...someone is always looking for the racist angle.

I am not saying that there is no truth in what you are thinking, but I have seen far too many 'oh - it is because they are black' posts...

I think that it is more likely a case of there are 200,000 dead....finding the fate of 4,000 is a smaller story.

[EFerrari]

18. Yep

[csziggy]

10. How many Americans went missing from the Indian Ocean tsunami?

That would give some perspective to the number now missing in Haiti.

ETA: Answering my own question - 18 known dead, 15 missing presumed dead.

Citizens of countries not affected by the tsunami that were killed or missing and presumed dead total less than 2500 worldwide. (Wikipedia 2154 dead, 53 missing - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countries_affected_by_the_2004_Indian_Ocean_earthquake#Countries_that_lost_citizens_while_abroad)

So 4,000 missing Americans in Haiti seems pretty high.

[ddeclue]

11. may a couple dozen.. far more Aussies there..

it was too far to have a lot of Americans. Haiti is an hour plane ride from Miami.

[csziggy]

12. See my edit to my message - you are right on the money with "a couple of dozen"

[Posteritatis]

14. I imagine it's underreported because they're outnumbered 50:1 by the dead alone

I know that to many the Haitians foreigners as opposed to humans, but I'm not sure why I should be singling out extra portions of shock and horror, or even prioritizing those portions, at a few thousand missing Americans amidst the rest of that catastrophe.

[DainBramaged]

16. Missing while black? Is this really a surprise to anyone?

:shrug:

[Neecy]

22. I did see some reporting on this

I think it was on CNN some weeks ago.

They mentioned the 4,000 number and said that anyone who called the special number to the State department that was provided had a file created on the missing person.

Some were crank calls, to be sure, but it's a requirement that a file be opened. Some were traveling in the region but the caller was unsure if they were in Haiti at the time of the earthquake; again, a file created.

Now State has to track down these people, some of whom don't exist because of the false calls. Certainly there were Americans killed in Haiti, but it's impossible to get a true figure because State still has to track each file. The number probably isn't close to 4,000 but that's the number that State is having to work with.

[Poll_Blind]

23. Thank you for a bit of clarification on that. I know that Americans traveling to...

...destinations, especially those who will be spending more than a few weeks or those going to destinations that are considered "dangerous" likely check in with their embassy for any number of reasons. What I didn't know is that it appears (as you indicated) that that 4,000 number also could have been contributed to after the earthquake.

Also interesting. Thanks!

PB