Blaming The Victims, Lying About The Death Count

This is a photo of Gilchrist, Texas from Boston.com's The Big Picture. Gilchrist is/was on a peninsula that's now an island. In Galveston 20,000 people out of a population of 57,000 stayed and weathered the blow. One would imagine some tried the same thing here. Just like Andrew and Katrina the official death count is seriously underplayed, for what reason I haven't got a clue. For Ike it's now only fifty five.

And as for the ones who made it - Victims blamed in the aftermath of Hurricane Ike

"It has been an especially vile element of the Ike story that state officials and the news media have continually blamed and insulted such victims of the storm, many of them poor and working class or suffering from physical disabilities, while themselves escaping criticism for their own inefficient evacuation of residents in many areas and the inadequate supplies and distribution of aid. Further exposing the longstanding incompetence and neglect of authorities, some Texans who did not leave in advance of Hurricane Ike’s landfall described not wanting to be caught up in another poorly executed evacuation such as had occurred in earlier storms and remained behind believing they would be safer in their homes than stranded on highways in the impossible-to-navigate traffic. In other cases, those living in areas that were not under either mandatory or voluntary evacuation orders told reporters that they should have been ordered to leave and would have done so if properly warned.
One searches in vain for those who have faith in authorities, and no wonder. Hurricane Ike is just the latest in a series of natural disasters that have revealed the inability of the capitalist system to provide for the people who fall in their path. Adequate warning before such natural disasters or the necessary infrastructure to survive and cope with a disaster and its aftermath are simply not in place.
In the face of tornadoes such as those that killed 59 in the southern US in February, wildfires such as those that burned in southern California in October 2007, or Hurricanes like Ike and, most horribly, Katrina, capitalism has failed every challenge. By and large, it has been working people that have most suffered as a result."