Posted on 08/30/2006 7:25:14 PM PDT by Ellesu
A warehouse in downtown New Orleans has become the focus of a heated post-Katrina debate. In the warehouse, which is in sight of the Superdome, are more than 100 caskets. Those caskets contain the bodies of Katrina victims who were either never identified or never claimed by their families.
The state had planned to bury the victims at a special site 60 miles away but Mayor Ray Nagin nixed the idea.
Nagin wants the bodies buried in New Orleans. Problem is it could take at least a year to raise the million dollars needed to build a cemetery and memorial.
In the meantime, the bodies will remain in the unrefrigerated warehouse.
You go into an above ground tomb and you get the top bunk. When another relative dies they push your remains into the pit with 10 - 15 other relatives.
Will they get a slow march through the Quarter with a Dixeland band and a second line?
Not completely true.
If the sarcophagus is properly sealed the ground water will eventually push it to the surface. The sarcophagus will literally float to the surface.
It may take a few decades but given that New Orleans is river delta land and has high ground water probably not too long.
I thought all the bodies from Katrina were moved to the morque they built in St. Gabriel?
I can see the new morgue from my plant.
Given the high humidity and temperatures in New Orleans I suspect that what will be in those aluminum government coffins will be more of a soup of bacteria, digested body tissue and fluids surrounding the darkly stained bones.
Ray Nagin is a comical fool. He is not all there mentally. Mr. Chocolate City loves the big money pot he dips into. His luck will run out eventually.
The should bury these poor souls in Nagin's front yard.
For the life of me I can't believe this fool is still mayor.
Over a hundred bodies unclaimed or unidentified is not the sign of a loving city. How many were people killed in New Orleans, a little less than 1500 with out checking. That about 7% of the bodies unwanted.
Creamate.
"Over a hundred bodies unclaimed or unidentified is not the sign of a loving city."
Many were homeless drifters. Plus there are people who have no living relatives who died, so no way to check DNA, etc. It is a stretch of the imagination to say that the bodies were unwanted. They most likely had no one close to them when they were alive. Some people are still looking for lost relatives who likely got washed back into a bayou or the river.
mmm, good point about the buoyancy, Pontiac
the city's first cemetery (I do not recall its name), its second (St. Peter Street Cemetery), and the St. Louis cemetery all have below ground burials. St. Louis was the first to convert over to above ground burials, for the dual reasons that it was lower than the first two cemeteries (and thus more prone to casket flotation) but also because there was no longer any more room in the cemetery for below ground burial. The water table today in NO is lower than it ever has been due to pumping; below ground burial isnt an impossibilty, but it still carries the rather gruesome risk of bodies coming loose if the city ever floods again. However, there is a burial technique, whereby the entire grave is given a concrete liner and sealed, that can prevent flotation; this was used in St. Louis Cemetery successfully but can be prohibitively costly. So I guess I was trying to point out that below ground burials are possible with technical advances and the subsidance of the water table, but, yes, they still probably arent a good idea if even only due to space concerns.
It's no myth, sadly. The bodies are there, embalmed I'm assuming.
This is not surprising. The us-vs-them mentality rules here. 'Outsiders' are constantly vilified, the thought of a changed
( more white) city is infinitely more horrifying than a destroyed one. The myopic mentality is so bad that now they don't want the 'New Orleans dead' to go anywhere else!!!
If anyone doubts what I say, or wants to know what the local thinking is like, I invite you to go to NOLA.com. Find the local forums and read! The hatred of 'outsiders' is everywhere. Forget that those outsiders have sent $$, and have come to physically clean up the mess. They don't mind 'outsiders' bringing in relief and free food- just keep on moving!
Provincialism/ Carribbean mentality was killing this city long before Katrina. Now it's exposed.
So , believe it- its more important that the dead, and the power, be kept here than it is for common sense and practicality to rule. This is New Orleans- cue the "Twilight Zone" theme...
I guess Nagin feels he will need the votes again next go-round.
That- and the fact that some 'connected' person would sell the cemetery land to the city, and other 'connected' people would profit from an in-city burial.
If the state buries these poor souls, none of the $$ comes to N.O.
Nothing ever has- nothing ever WILL- get done in N.O. unless the right people profit from it. I think the entire place should be Federalized. Not because I think it would be any more efficient, but that it would end local cronyism at last.
The plantation mentality needs a tough overseer.
Nagin gave a speech here in Indianapolis last month to a "journalist" convention and got on local tv quite a bit.
He is a real piece of work.
Really a perfect representation of his constituents.
Unfortunately the rest of us are picking up the tab for all of it.
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