So, in the midst of various spergouts I might have missed it, but do we have a updated death toll? I guess most, if not all, of the small hollers and creeks have been reached by now?
Deaths: Numbers on fatalities haven't been updated over the weekend.
Contact: Everywhere has at least some form of contact now, whether that be radio, Starlink, or cell service. Even if it's not widespread, someone in each town has a way to communicate with relief officials. As for one house homesteads and mountain folks living in a holler, there's no way of knowing.
The other grim part nobody is really talking about yet, is how many of the dead are virtually unreachable, under literal tons of dirt and rock, buried in one of the numerous landslides. There's absolutely no telling, and there's still no way to tell how many are actually missing but just out of contact. If someone is reported missing, there's really no way to tell if they're actually missing, or if they're in an area with minimal communication and hasn't bothered to tell someone with a radio to tell the unification center where they are, because they have no idea that they've been reported missing.
I figure we'll probably have a much clearer picture by the end of this week. Now that the immediate needs are more or less met, people have food, water, and shelter, even if it's just bottled water and MREs, Red Cross and the like can physically go around and take a census of who is in these towns. The number of missing we have Friday afternoon is likely going to be bodies that haven't been found, as grim as sounds.
