likely not be on any registry or other visitors--and perhaps even friends/family members didn't know they were headed to the Guadalupe River or areas nearby.

As I mentioned a few days ago, the number 144 is the current total lost in the Colorado Big Thompson Flood just shy of 50 years ago, yet every time the media (especially newspapers) do a retrospective with a pending memorial anniversary, they hear from someone who has long believed a lost friend or relative-long disappeared- was there and not officially among the unaccounted for. Occasionally, they are able to prove it and likewise remove someone from the official "missing" list who was later found not to be in the area. And yes, there can be those who use the episode as a chance to "officially disappear." All of this is harder today, of course, but elements will make it hard to be absolutely certain of the final tally.

Truly a horrible tragedy for those parents and all others lost. 'Impossible to know what to say beyond that.

All these people did not have to die

In the Texas City Disaster of 1947, whole families disappeared, most of them Mexican workers for whom there were no official records. Lots of unidentified bodies in a mass grave. The total casualties will never be known.

Huge disasters like these, the Halifax Straits Explosion (in which a NA encampment vanished) the Great Peshtigo Fire (likewise unknown numbers of NAs vanished), the Great Galveston Hurricane, and even the more recent Hurricane Katrina (heckuva job, Bu**sh**) will always bring with them substantial numbers of unrecorded, unrecognized casualties, even in a modern society which tries to keep records on all its citizens -- those on the fringes of society simply disappear in death, as they were rendered largely invisible in life.