Who knows?
TITANYEN, Haiti - Haiti issued wildly conflicting death tolls for the Jan. 12 earthquake yesterday, adding to the confusion about how many people died - and to suspicion that nobody really knows....
And probably never will.
There is no doubt that the death toll - whatever it is - is one of the highest in a modern disaster.
A third of Haiti’s 9 million people were crowded into the chaotic capital when the quake struck just to the southwest a few minutes before 5 p.m. Many were preparing to leave their offices or schools. Some 250,000 houses and 30,000 commercial buildings collapsed, many crushing people inside, according to government estimates.
For days, people piled bodies by the side of the road or left them half-buried under the rubble. Countless more remain under collapsed buildings.
No foreign government or independent agency has issued its own death toll. Many agencies that usually help estimate casualty numbers say they are too busy assisting the living to keep track of the dead....
It’s common in major disasters to see large discrepancies in death tolls: Governments may use lower figures to save face or higher figures to attract foreign aid.
Why did Israel and the Holocaust just pop into my mind?
In Haiti’s case, however, where the very institutions responsible for compiling information were themselves devastated, reaching a death toll is particularly difficult.
Even some officials express skepticism that the government is keeping count....
I noticed there is skepticism about government everywhere.
--more--"
Btw, I heard 500,000 even.
"Leading Senator Youri Latortue told the AP that 500,000 could be dead, but acknowledged that nobody really knows."
