Study of Hurricane Katrina's dead show most were old, lived near levee breaches

Four years later, researchers still count New Orleans' Katrina dead, parsing them into categories, puzzling over exactly how each of the more than 1,400 victims perished -- and what might be done to protect them the next time a big one rolls in off the Gulf.

Their findings, though incomplete, jibe with common sense. The dead were overwhelmingly old. Most lived near the levee breaches in the 9th Ward and Lakeview. About two-thirds either drowned or died from illness or injury brought on by being trapped in houses surrounded by water.

The rest died from maladies or injuries suffered in or exacerbated by an arduous evacuation -- or an inability to evacuate quickly enough, including many who died in local hospitals that lost power and other life-sustaining services. Neither race nor gender made anyone more likely to die, only a failure to evacuate and a location near a levee breach.

Emergency preparedness experts and government officials say the data reinforces the dire need for continuous improvement in the government's evacuation apparatus, particularly for the area's most frail, poor and often hardest-to-motivate residents.

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