Posted on 09/06/2005 9:06:25 AM PDT by Brian Mosely
A co-owner of Shelbyville-based Gowen-Smith Chapel has been deployed to Gulfport, Miss., to help with recovery since Hurricane Katrina, and his business partner here has described the grim task there.
"DMort is telling us to expect up to 40,000 bodies," Dan Buckner said, quoting officials with the Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Team, a volunteer arm of Homeland Security.
His partner, Dan Hicks, of Paducah, Ky., was deployed Monday. Buckner, of Dickson, is on standby. Their funeral home is one of several collection sites for donations to be taken to the Red Cross in Fayetteville on Wednesday for transfer to places in need.
The 40,000 estimate does "not include the number of disinterred remains that have been displaced from ... mausoleums," Buckner told the Times-Gazette Monday.
(Excerpt) Read more at t-g.com ...
Dear
Lord
This could be a long term mission projection and include the handling of nonstorm related deaths that occur over the months ahead before regular mortuary services are restored in the communities in the Gulf region.
I wish someone would explain to me what they are going to dow ith that many bodies? How are they going to identify a tenth of them?
Where are they going to bury that many bodies? The only option I can see is cremations.
They are simply taking a worst case position on this. AFter Andrew, thousands of bodybags were sent in, but only few were used.
If the area is evacuated, how are there going to be nonstorm related deaths?
Until the sewer system can be rebuilt, no one's going back to New Orleans. This may be an upper UPPER range estimate, but it's not promising.
I guess my prediction of 20,000 dead was low after all.
If I could spell I'd be dangerous
dow ith should be do with...
I hope you are right.
Where do they come up with these numbers?
I still say 15K
What are they going to do, ship in bodies from around the US.
George Bush doesn't care about white people.
What Is "Storm Surge" and Why It Matters.
That is exactly why the Southern Louisiana Evacuation Plan specifically called for the COMPLETE evacuation of the New Orleans flood bowl PRIOR TO a Category 3 storm or higher and stated that people without private transportation were to be transported on public buses:
5. School and municipal buses, government-owned vehicles and vehicles provided by volunteer agencies may be used to provide transportation for individuals who lack transportation and require assistance in evacuating. .
I read yesterday that the plan is to bury in a mass grave somewhere upstate, then do disinterments later should family members want to conduct an individual burial. Just how they're going to organize a mass grave so that bodies can be retrieved is something I can't get my head around. These bodies will never be able to be embalmed, so they will decompose rather rapidly.
Nobody has the nerve to make a declaration to erect large funeral pyres and burn all the bodies, as was done after 12,000 people were killed in the 1900 Galveston hurricane. But that is what ought to be done.
"where do they come up with these numbers?"
It certainly hasn't come to those numbers yet, but it certainly seems conceivable that there could be 1,000 + casualties.
You have to understant there are probably poor dead souls lodged under trees, under cars and stuck in flooded buildings that are yet to be found. In the flooding that hit my area in West Virginia in 2001, there are some people that were never found, even to this day.
I don't mean to be indelicate, but, someone who has been in the water for six weeks...well... not much chance they will be identified.
Also, another thing. Has anyone stopped to consider that there are probably a few dozen murders committed during the aftermath of the flooding that will never be solved? Not much way to figure out what killed a man who has been floating in a canal for weeks....or months.
Now, the area is going to be suffering from diseases related to the clean up.
More deaths may be related to this aspect, rather than direct result of the flood surge, because many of these people are still cut off from any aid.
On FoxNews this morning, someone said the area of devastation along the gulf is roughly the size of the state of Kansas. 90,000 square miles (IIRC).
The poor people who have to conduct this... my original estimate was 15k, and I was shocked with that.
They're accustomed to some gruesome stuff, especially DMORT. I worked in a funeral home in college, did some embalming. I even thought about volunteering for this duty, but I'm not a licensed embalmer or funeral director in Texas, so I doubt they'd take me.
I'd also be afraid that bacteria is simply going to be out of control, and some of this stuff is lethal.
I'd be looking to bring in some advisers from Sri Lanka or Bangladesh where mass deaths from flooding occur more often.
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