Reports of anarchy at Superdome overstated

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Casshew

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NEW ORLEANS — After five days managing near riots, medical horrors and unspeakable living conditions inside the Superdome, Louisiana National Guard Col. Thomas Beron prepared to hand over the dead to representatives of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Following days of internationally reported murders, rapes and gang violence inside the stadium, the doctor from FEMA — Beron doesn't remember his name — came prepared for a grisly scene: He brought a refrigerated 18-wheeler and three doctors to process bodies.

"I've got a report of 200 bodies in the Dome," Beron recalled the doctor saying.

The real total?

Six, Beron said.

Of those, four died of natural causes, one overdosed and another jumped to his death in an apparent suicide, said Beron, who personally oversaw the handoff of bodies from a Dome freezer, where they lay atop melting bags of ice.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nation
 
The media really add fuel to the fire down there, imo. How disgusting to do that at a time like that- and it was all because they had a liberal ax to grind.:slap: IMO
 
Casshew said:
NEW ORLEANS — After five days managing near riots, medical horrors and unspeakable living conditions inside the Superdome, Louisiana National Guard Col. Thomas Beron prepared to hand over the dead to representatives of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Following days of internationally reported murders, rapes and gang violence inside the stadium, the doctor from FEMA — Beron doesn't remember his name — came prepared for a grisly scene: He brought a refrigerated 18-wheeler and three doctors to process bodies.

"I've got a report of 200 bodies in the Dome," Beron recalled the doctor saying.

The real total?

Six, Beron said.

Of those, four died of natural causes, one overdosed and another jumped to his death in an apparent suicide, said Beron, who personally oversaw the handoff of bodies from a Dome freezer, where they lay atop melting bags of ice.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nation
Click to expand...

I figured as such.
 
I wonder what the reports of other crimes will be. I can see how word of a rape could spread through the dome causing terror and panic. It would be a matter of hours, if not minutes, before it sounded like there were people being dragged off and assaulted by the dozens.

I certainly don't mean this to minimize even one crime, but I do agree that the media had a field day with this event. But then, what else is new?
 
I read this article last night and was saddened. It was horrible enough what the evacuees had to live through without adding fuel to the fire.
 
Another Article:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-rumors27sep27,0,5492806,full.story?coll=la-home-headlines

~snip~

BATON ROUGE, La. — Maj. Ed Bush recalled how he stood in the bed of a pickup truck in the days after Hurricane Katrina, struggling to help the crowd outside the Louisiana Superdome separate fact from fiction. Armed only with a megaphone and scant information, he might have been shouting into, well, a hurricane.

The National Guard spokesman's accounts about rescue efforts, water supplies and first aid all but disappeared amid the roar of a 24-hour rumor mill at New Orleans' main evacuation shelter. Then a frenzied media recycled and amplified many of the unverified reports.

"It just morphed into this mythical place where the most unthinkable deeds were being done," Bush said Monday of the Superdome.

His assessment is one of several in recent days to conclude that newspapers and television exaggerated criminal behavior in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, particularly at the overcrowded Superdome and Convention Center.

The New Orleans Times-Picayune on Monday described inflated body counts, unverified "rapes," and unconfirmed sniper attacks as among examples of "scores of myths about the dome and Convention Center treated as fact by evacuees, the media and even some of New Orleans' top officials."

~snip~
 
IdahoMom said:
The media really add fuel to the fire down there, imo. How disgusting to do that at a time like that- and it was all because they had a liberal ax to grind.:slap: IMO
Click to expand...
Liberal? Sounded more like a conservative axe to me (those lousy, lazy welfare types - they go rioting and killing each other at the drop of a hat - it's their own fault they are poor - Fox news sure was having fun with it, and no one calls them liberal)... Actually, that's probably why the stories were so reported - they had an angle for everyone.

But I don't know that it's either, lazy reporting more likely. The refugees were saying it - they believed it. But it was just a bunch of rumors, and a few facts that were blown out of proportion. Probably inevitable, in such a scary situation where no one knows what is really happening.
 
I believe it was the conservatives I know who were ranting about all that "terrible looting" going on, right on TV.

Turns out it wasn't so much looting after all. I guess everything was exaggerated, included the number of deaths expected. But the tragedy was still monumental.

I thought the media did a great job of covering, award winning in fact, and I don't think they had a liberal or conservative agenda.
 
It would be interesting (as well as appropriate) for the journalists who reported on all this to be questioned as to their process for verifying what they were putting out for public consumption. They appear to have done a real disservice and should be called to account for it.
 
Well, technically, they usually said there were "reportedly", or "we've been told" - and if I were in their shoes, I don't know how much differently it would have gone. I mean, when people are telling you all these things are happening, how can you not report it? They're the ones on scene, if you don't believe them, who do you believe? But I think they should have been quicker, when the emergency subsided, to check out and report the reality. There's been plenty of time to try to track down the victims of these supposed crimes, to find the bodies, etc.


Now that it's out, they (reporters) should spread the word loudly about what the real situation was.
 
Liberal? Sounded more like a conservative axe to me (those lousy, lazy welfare types - they go rioting and killing each other at the drop of a hat - it's their own fault they are poor - Fox news sure was having fun with it, and no one calls them liberal)... Actually, that's probably why the stories were so reported - they had an angle for everyone.
Took the words right out of my mouth. Some people have labels for everything.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
Seems to me that reports came directly from those at the Dome, talking to reporters. It was probably the gossip game, from person to person, that exaggerated the reports.

It's certainly good news that there were 8 bodies rather than 200--or even 9!
 
LovelyPigeon said:
Seems to me that reports came directly from those at the Dome, talking to reporters. It was probably the gossip game, from person to person, that exaggerated the reports.

It's certainly good news that there were 8 bodies rather than 200--or even 9!
Click to expand...

I saw a doctor interviewed who claimed that he personally saw approximately 200 bodies....but perhaps he was at the convention center. Either way, I suppose it's not true, or we're not being told the truth now. Who knows?
 
At this point, who knows what the truth is. Perhaps the media is now downplaying it - for whatever reason.
 
Mabel said:
I saw a doctor interviewed who claimed that he personally saw approximately 200 bodies....but perhaps he was at the convention center. Either way, I suppose it's not true, or we're not being told the truth now. Who knows?
Click to expand...
People often change rumors to be something they personally saw - for more credibility, or in the cae of a doctor being interviewed, to get on TV. I'm sure he believed it was real - when you hear a rumor so many times, from other people who say they personally saw it (notice how many urban legends are emailed around and the person who sends it directly knows the person this happened to...?) - you believe it's true, and there's no harm in changing the story just a little....
 
Details said:
People often change rumors to be something they personally saw - for more credibility, or in the cae of a doctor being interviewed, to get on TV. I'm sure he believed it was real - when you hear a rumor so many times, from other people who say they personally saw it (notice how many urban legends are emailed around and the person who sends it directly knows the person this happened to...?) - you believe it's true, and there's no harm in changing the story just a little....
Click to expand...

It just makes no sense to me. The Health Department says 10 dead bodies were found at the Superdome and 4 at the Convention Center. Nowhere near 200, but you'd think the numbers would at least jive.
 
Reports like this one, about the DMORT (for Disaster Mortuary Operation Response Team) operation set up in an airport hanger in Biloxi as a temporary morgue, may have given rise to rumors of "200 bodies" in other locations. Rumors and gossip tend to increase more for the negative than the positive as they're repeated:

The first 30 or so bodies that came into the Biloxi morgue, called DMORT East, could be identified, Milano said. But most of the rest of the 200 bodies could not be. -
http://news.newstimeslive.com/story.php?id=74622&category=Local

With 20,000 or so people--among them sick & elderly-- waiting to be rescued from flooded areas, 200 dead bodies didn't sound unlikely.

Rumors were treated as fact – both inside the convention center and out. A later report that there were 200 bodies in the convention center and the Superdome brought a coroner's unit rushing from St. Gabriel and Baton Rouge, La.

One night, said evacuee Steve Rochon, a deranged man started yelling, "Here comes the water!" – intimating the Mississippi was about to flood the center. A panic ensued, and mothers grabbed children.

The deaf couldn't hear. The old in the wheelchairs couldn't move. But the stampede was on anyway. A mother screamed that someone was stepping on her baby.

"People just started panicking," recalled Mr. Rochon, forced to move animatedly on a prosthetic leg. "People were getting run over." - http://www.wfaa.com/sharedcontent/d...center_16tex.ART.North.Edition2.1de98b97.html
 
Mabel, I don't know but maybe this is the report that you saw:

I personally saw probably 200 bodies," Taylor said. "I personally picked up 20
or so. They had different teams because we only had so many vehicles." ... -

www.commercialappeal.com/mca/ desoto/article/0,1426,MCA_451_4060194,00.html

Taylor was staged at a temporary morgue in a Gulfport, MS funeral home.
 
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