"She's not dead. I saw her lip move."
Posted on 04/10/2006 5:32:38 PM PDT by blam
Bill Would Require ID on La. Caskets
Tuesday April 11, 2006 1:01 AM
By MELINDA DESLATTE
Associated Press Writer
BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) - The floodwaters of hurricanes Katrina and Rita disturbed hundreds of coffins, many forced from their grave sites without identifying markers to provide information about who was buried inside them. Now, lawmakers are considering ways to make those caskets more identifiable if the state has another flood.
``We have to make sure that family members have some way to identify who is buried here,'' said Rep. Mickey Frith, D-Kaplan.
The House Commerce Committee on Monday approved a bill that would require funeral homes to include some sort of ID or inscription on each casket that would list the name of the person in the coffin, the date of death and the name of the funeral home that handled the burial.
``Then we could at least identify and have a better way of tracking the heirs to that individual,'' said Rep. Gil Pinac, D-Crowley, chairman of the committee.
The hurricanes were estimated to have dislodged more than 1,000 coffins in Louisiana. While many were quickly identified and returned to their places of eternal rest, health officials were combing through dental and DNA records to match the names of the missing dead with the remains disturbed from their burial sites.
Under the bill, the exact way the caskets would be tagged would be left to the board that oversees funeral homes in Louisiana after representatives of the industry said different types of identifying markers might be needed depending on the type of casket involved.
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
Good point, but...here is a better thing we should tell them:
DON"T BURY PEOPLE BELOW SEA LEVEL AND EXPECT WATERTIGHT COFFINS TO STAY UNDER THE GROUND!
Sorry about the caps...just for effect
Why can't they just use their voter ID?
Let them use stainless steel military dogtags. They are inexpensive and should be relatively durable. Or just make an inscription on a piece of glass or plastic. No big deal. Name, SSN and the geocoordinates of where they were buried should do it. Perhaps the inscription on the grave marker would be a nice thing, in case it is damaged or lost.
why not a computer chip?
A current Chicago voter registration card would do the trick.
"She's not dead. I saw her lip move."
No Problem! The local rat party already has voter registration cards ready to go.
Stuck On Stupid
My first impression was that the state would demand a license fee. I think it's a good idea as well, but the state is going to turn this into a revenue source or my name is Wally Cleaver. LOL
Just read the title,
is this some new voter registration thing?
Sorry. Ordinarily I'm insane, but I do have lucid moments when I'm merely stupid. Lately I've had these spells where I'm seemingly rather practical and logical, but I think it will pass. I hadn't thought of the registration, transcription, recording and certification fees, let alone the taxes on the aforementioned items. Even so, I think you could get a pair of dog tags out the door for $99. But I've been known to be optimistic.
I live in south Louisiana, and we're really not that stupid. As far as I know, these caskets were not buried below sea level. If they were they would have popped up on their own already. In fact, in many parts of the state you have to have a permit to dig a hole past a certain depth. It was just a case where the flooding was so severe it pushed them up anyway. Additionally, some of the disturbed caskets were ones that were in underground tombs. I know someone who had his grandmother's casket lost down in St. Bernard parish (south of N.O.) during Katrina, and having seen what he's gone through, I think it's a great idea.
Sorry, I meant some were disturbed from ABOVE ground tombs.
To be fair, I was really more joking for effect. I realize that didn't come across.
Could it also be used for voter ID?
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