Home > NOLA: 800 bodies in the morgue - so what if you lose a body or two
NOLA: 800 bodies in the morgue - so what if you lose a body or two
by Open-Publishing - Tuesday 4 October 20058 comments
Loss of bodies adds to grief of many families. Authorities have few answers
By DAVID ZUCCHINO and NICHOLAS RICCARDI
BATON ROUGE, La. - When he finally could leave his post guarding a nuclear power plant after Hurricane Katrina struck, Richard George Reysack III sped to the flooded home of his 80-year-old father east of New Orleans. Slogging through the muck, he found his father’s corpse face-down in the hallway.
As devastating as that discovery was, at least Reysack had his father’s remains. Then even that was taken away. The authorities who moved the corpse to a temporary morgue not only won’t return it to Reysack for burial, he said, but they won’t even confirm that they have it.
Reysack’s family has published an obituary and held a memorial service - all without a body.
"My family has had to endure that memorial service knowing that, Lord knows when we’ll get my father’s body . . . and put this behind us," Reysack said.
A month after Katrina upended the lives of hundreds of thousands here, families of the dead have been traumatized yet again by the ordeal of trying to pry loved ones’bodies from a bureaucratic quagmire. They say they have spent weeks being rebuffed or ignored by state and federal officials at a massive temporary morgue that houses hundreds of decomposed bodies.
Many of those bodies are unidentified. But authorities have been provided with ample information to identify dozens of corpses that they continue to hold, to the dismay of family member scattered across the country.
The state official in charge of the morgue, Dr. Louis Cataldie, said through a spokesman that he was concerned about the flow of information from the morgue. At a news conference here last week, he acknowledged that many families were suffering. "These are horrible times," Cataldie said.
Even funeral home directors, who normally would retrieve bodies from authorities, say they have been turned away at the heavily guarded morgue in St. Gabriel.
Among the remains authorities refuse to release are those of people who died before Katrina struck Aug. 29, but were transferred when floodwaters threatened the New Orleans morgue.
"It’s inefficient and inept out there - it’s beyond incompetence,"said William Bagnell, a funeral director who said he was refused access to four bodies at the morgue even though officials had faxed him forms inviting him to pick up the bodies.
For funeral directors and ordinary citizens alike, the grief of losing a relative has been compounded by the agonizing search for their remains.
Malcolm Gibson, a New Orleans funeral director, said he has tried for more than two weeks to recover the body of his 83-year-old uncle, who died in his home during the storm and whose remains were delivered to the morgue by state police. Authorities would not let him in to identify the body, he said.
Earline Eleby Coleman drove from Houston Sept. 5 to recover the body of her 78-year-old mother, who died at the New Orleans convention center in the arms of another family member. She was told to wait for confirmation that the body was even at the morgue. She is still waiting.
Wayne Dean Ryburn spent 10 days chasing his elderly mother’s corpse from hospitals to morgues to parish coroner’s offices. He finally recovered it from a morgue in the Louisiana countryside with the help of his sister, a registered nurse who had attended to the dying woman.
And Cal Johnson, a New Orleans funeral director, said he has faxed information to the morgue about an employee, a 75-year-old embalmer who died in his New Orleans home during the storm. But even though police took the body to the morgue, Johnson said, he was told that it could not be located.
"I’m past the angry stage," said Reysack, who discovered his father’s body Sept. 11. "It’s total loss and total frustration, as if you’ve got your hands tied and the answer is right there in front of you but you can’t get it."
Cataldie, a former medical examiner, acknowledged that identifying and releasing bodies has been painfully slow. Of the nearly 800 bodies taken to the morgue, he said, just 32 have been identified positively and another 340 have been identified tentatively.
Because many bodies decomposed in heat and floodwaters after being left uncollected, Cataldie said, some victims never will be identified and their cause of death never known.
Forensic specialists supervised by the Federal Emergency Management Agency are taking X-rays and fingerprints of the corpses, but identifying bodies and notifying next-of-kin is being handled by state officials. Their greatest fear is misidentifying a corpse in the deluge of bodies.
"I wish I could speed up the process," Cataldie said. "But speeding up the process could contaminate the process and I just can’t do that."
Bob Johannssen, a spokesman for the state Department of Health and Hospitals, said part of the problem might be that families haven’t been told to call the National Find Family Call Center (866-326-9393.) He said the center relays information between families and the morgue.
But several families said their frantic calls to FEMA and state officials were taken by people who were either indifferent or unable to provide any information. And even those whose loved ones’ remains have been officially identified and cleared for release said it still took weeks to get the bodies.
Reysack, the nuclear plant worker, said that as Katrina approached, he and his sister implored their father to leave his house in the low-lying New Orleans suburb of Arabi.
"I know what I’m doing," the elder Reysack told his children. "I’m not leaving my home."
After helping recover his father’s body, Reysack filled out paperwork, provided a DNA sample and confirmed his father’s identity to the recovery team. He was told to contact FEMA to retrieve the body.
But his calls got him nowhere. He said he reached one chaplain in St. Gabriel who told him that the paperwork had been lost and that the computer did not show his father’s corpse as "identified."
"My ultimate mission and purpose in life now is I want an answer," he said. "Someone has to explain to me how they lost my father’s body."
End of article
By DAVID ZUCCHINOand NICHOLAS RICCARDI
Los Angeles Times
Forum posts
5 October 2005, 05:11
Wait a minute .... this is the first I’ve heard of "8,000" deaths in La ..... are those numbers correct?????? 8,000 dead????????????????????????????????
5 October 2005, 16:51
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1478288/posts
This was taken from a 9/6/2005 prodiction read the piece.
Posted on 09/06/2005 2:33:59 AM PDT by BillCompton
I have not seen any video of structures reduced to match sticks in the city of New Orleans. There was damage, to be sure, but not like the environs east of there. So how did the supposed 10,000 die? Storm runoff from the 5 inches of rain or so, no doubt flooded parts of the city. But I doubt that killed anyone. Wind might have killed a handfull, though normally it does not kill many at all. Hurricane Andrew blew down many thousands of homes, but only killed a total of 26 people. So we are left with the flood to kill all the 10,000 people.
Mississippi’s official death toll now exceeds 200. ... Women from New Orleans who had just had babies or were evacuated to Baton Rouge and had babies here ...
NEW ORLEANS — Storm victims were raped and beaten, fights and fires broke out, ... The death toll has already reached at least 126 in Mississippi. ...
New Orleans convulsed in looting and violence after the hurricane, ... New Orleans Death Toll Climbs To 423 · La. Nursing Home Owners Charged With 34 Cases ...
www.rightwingnews.com/archives/week_2005_09_11.PHP - 176k - Cached - Similar pages
5 October 2005, 05:59
oh sure we lost the body. got to keep that body count low ya know.
5 October 2005, 11:57
... and these are the bodies that were not "lost" in transit. How many really died will never be known, because the government can never admit how many lives their incompetence, corruption and cronyism has really cost. If they did, they would be on the next list of fatalities.
5 October 2005, 12:47
...and more importantly, it would add to the numbers of his other failure that he loves to politicize and use death for his own political agenda shamelessly.
How is he going to talk about 9/11 if the there are 3 times the deaths for his newest failure?
Nope, can’t have that...so sayeth the marketing wizards, PR puffers, and image consultants.
So there you have it. No accurate death toll, because then we can’t invade Iran and go get dem darn evil doers who hate our way of life....(that’s why they have shopping malls and neiman marcus see)
Many Iranians flaunt their style
The polarized worlds of reform-minded and conservative Iranians clash at an upscale mall in Tehran.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0219/p06s01-wome.html
UPSCALE MALL IN TEHRAN
UPSCALE MALL IN TEHRAN
UPSCALE MALL IN TEHRAN
UPSCALE MALL IN TEHRAN
Yeah, I’m shaking in my boots the iranians will invade new jersey wearing Versace.
5 October 2005, 13:48
The LA Times has rewritten the article - editing out the 8,000 body count changing it to 800, and adding a one-sentence paragraph, " The official death toll in Louisiana from Hurricane Katrina is 932, and more bodies continue to be found."
The Concord Monitor apparently didn’t get the memo.
5 October 2005, 16:02
So, will we ever know the truth?
Aren’t there lists of of thousands missing? Where did they go? Swept out to sea?
Lucky for bush they will never be counted, sort of like if you die for his war on the plane coming home from Iraq, you don’t count...."officially".
Officials: Thousands of Dead
Local officials had predicted the death toll would reach into the thousands, and federal officials agreed Sunday.
"I think it’s evident it’s in the thousands," Leavitt said.
Chertoff said an untold number probably will be found dead in swamped homes, temporary shelters where many went for days without food or clean water, or even in the streets once the water is drained from New Orleans, which could take a month or more.
"I think we need to prepare the country for what’s coming," Chertoff said on "Fox News Sunday." "It is going to be about as ugly of a scene as I think you can imagine."
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,168435,00.html
Red Cross website for Katrina missing logs 94,000 names
The provisional official death toll from Hurricane Katrina stands at 230, although officials have estimated the final total could reach 10,000. More than one million people, mainly in Louisiana, have been forced out of their homes.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/usweath...
Small town houses Katrina fatalities
ST. GABRIEL, La. - The dead are rolling into town. The first sign of this was the convoy of 18-wheelers that rumbled into the parking lot behind the Highway 30 Truck Plaza one day last week, driven by truckers forbidden to discuss their cargo or destination.
There were 40, 9, 25 trucks: accounts vary. But all had refrigeration units. ’’We don’t have refrigeration business around here,’’ said Tommy Lyons, the manager of the truck stop’s garage. ``All our business is chemicals, so we noticed that.’’
They had noticed too, when the Federal Emergency Management Agency rented the giant TT&H Warehouse at the end of Iberville Street, next to town hall. Eventually, 70 of those white refrigerated 18-wheelers parked next to the warehouse. By Wednesday, there were 393 bodies inside the warehouse, with room for 607 more.
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiheral...
Death toll in Louisiana could be above 10,000: US Senator
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/2005090...
The confirmed death toll as of October 3 stands at 1,203, mainly from Louisiana (964) and Mississippi (221).[96]
Direct deaths indicate those caused by the direct effects of the winds, flooding, storm surge or oceanic effects of Katrina. Indirect deaths indicate those caused by hurricane-related accidents (including car accidents), fires or other incidents, as well as clean-up incidents and health issues.
Government officials had estimated fatalities as high as 10,000. The fear that thousands of people died has proven to be an urban legend. [97] [98] [99]
On September 6 FEMA stopped allowing journalists to accompany rescuers searching for victims, saying they would take up too much space. At the same time, FEMA requested that journalists stop taking pictures of dead bodies. News organizations have filed suit in Federal Court, claiming a violation of the First Amendment’s freedom of the press. In face of the lawsuit, FEMA has since countermanded this request[100].
On September 9 FEMA ordered 50,000 body bags in addition to the 25,000 previously ordered. [101]
On September 13, officials announced that negligent homicide charges had been filed against the owners of a New Orleans nursing home, where the bodies of thirty four residents, apparently drowned, were found.[102]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurric...
Louisiana ends search for bodies
BATON ROUGE, La., Oct. 4 (UPI) — The house-to-house search for bodies in New Orleans and other towns hit by Hurricane Katrina was halted Tuesday, officials announced.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/upi/?fe...
One Mississippi Vet’s Stories of the Aftermath
While "official reports" put the death toll in Mississippi at about 300, eyewitnesses say at least 3,000 bodies that have been recovered, and many others have still not been found and might never be recovered. There were stories of loose dogs forming packs and feeding on bodies and carcasses in the weeks following the storms.
One search and rescue worker’s wife, a horse owner herself who lost three homes to hurricanes while she was growing up on the coast of Mississippi, said her "tough" husband would call and cry after a day of work because of the overwhelming emotions from finding and recovering human remains in coastal towns.
http://www.thehorse.com/viewarticle...
How We Survived the Flood
Alligators were eating people. They had all kinds of stuff in the water. They had babies floating in the water.
We had to walk over hundreds of bodies of dead people. People that we tried to save from the hospices, from the hospitals and from the old-folks homes. I tried to get the police to help us, but I realized they were in the same straits we were. We rescued a lot of police officers in the flat boat
from the 5th district police station. The guy who was in the boat, he rescued a lot of them and brought them to different places so they could be saved.
We understood that the police couldn’t help us, but we couldn’t understand why the National Guard and them couldn’t help us, because we kept seeing them but they never would stop and help us.
http://www.counterpunch.org/neville...
Day 45 – 10/5/05, 6-Weeks Later, Most Storm Victims Lie Unnamed
BATON ROUGE, La., Oct. 4 - In a country that cherishes the names of the dead, reads them aloud, engraves them in stone and stitches them into quilts, it is odd that Hurricane Katrina’s victims remain, more than a month later, largely anonymous.
With 972 deaths confirmed and the search for bodies declared complete, the state has released only 61 bodies and made the names of only 32 victims public.
In contrast, of the 221 dead in Mississippi, 196 have been identified, a state official said.
State officials, still in crisis mode, say compiling and releasing data about the dead is simply not a priority.
http://outhouserag.typepad.com/hurr...
Match the missing with death toll
http://www.familylinks.icrc.org/katrina/people
900 over here, thousands over there, not a priority...oh well, guess we should trust the government on this one. Now can we invade Iran?
6 October 2005, 07:19
Because of the ridiculous American registrastion law it will be hard to tell, how many people died in New Orleans and Mississipi. God, Americans are such dumb a..es. What’s wrong with registration? It does not affect your rights, but other phony law which is far more dangerous is widely accepted.
Educate yourself Americans.