Tuesday, October 04, 2005
This article an help explain how New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin's perfectly rreasonably conjecture that about 10,000 died in New Orleans has been undercut by a factor of ten. Note also that the company, Kenyon, hired to oversee the body count has a history of hiding corpses.
From L A Times Oct 2: "When he could finally leave his post guarding a nuclear power plant after Hurricane Katrina struck, Richard George Reysack III sped east of New Orleans to the flooded home of his 80-year-old father. 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 the body. 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, they won't even confirm that they have it.
Reysack's family published an obituary and held a memorial service — all without a body.[...]
Families of the dead have been traumatized again by the ordeal of trying to pry their 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 corpses.
[...]
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. But authorities would not confirm that they even had the body, he said.
Earline Eleby Coleman drove from Houston on 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 she had to wait for confirmation that the body was even at the morgue. She is still waiting.[...]
And Cal Johnson, a New Orleans funeral director, said he had faxed information to the morgue about an employee, a 75-year-old embalmer who died in his New Orleans home during the hurricane. But even though police took the body to the morgue, Johnson said, he was told that it could not be located.
[...]
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.....| Posted at 15:31 | PERMA-LINK |
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