New Orleans Update

I have learned two interesting things today about New Orleans.

1) A friend who has relatives in New Orleans claims that there is still no mail delivery, phone service is either sparce or nonexistent, and that there is only one public school open in the city.

2)

Statistics released by the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals suggest that fewer than half of the victims of Hurricane Katrina were black, and that whites died at the highest rate of all races in New Orleans. . . .

African-Americans make up 67.25 percent of the population and 59.1 percent of the deceased. Other minorities constitute approximately 5 percent of the population and represented 4.3 percent of the storm's fatalities.

Overall for the state, 658 bodies have been identified. Forty-seven percent were African-American and 42 percent were Caucasian. The remaining bodies were either non-black minorities or undetermined.

An additional 247 victims have not been identified, so their demographic information has not been released. . . .