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"A collaborative political resource." |
Quest to identify two who died in Louisiana in hurricane Katrina
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| Contributor | Brandonius Maximus |
| Last Edited | Brandonius Maximus Dec 18, 2006 11:57am |
| Category | General |
| News Date | Dec 18, 2006 11:00am |
| Description | NEW ORLEANS (AP) - Water is unforgiving to the dead and by the time the crews arrived, the men were missing their eyes.
Over the months that followed, investigators cut them, prodded them, photographed them, X-rayed them and removed pieces of their DNA, all in an attempt to coax their bodies into spitting out names.
There are 29 bodies in New Orleans, all stuck in a forensic purgatory - unknown, unclaimed and unable to be buried more than 15 months after hurricane Katrina made landfall.
There were those among Katrina's dead who succumbed alongside people they knew; slips of paper or damp cardboard, inscribed with their names, were tucked into their clothes. But many more drowned alone, their bodies drifting in the black water, getting snagged on fence posts, coming to rest beneath freeway overpasses, in the rubble of uprooted homes.
A body can only say so much about itself. It can tell its sex, for instance, its height, a race. Bones can speak of past accidents.
But the elements and simple decay can erase much of the rest. More than a week passed before the first crew arrived to retrieve the more than 1,300 people who died in Louisiana and by that time, many of the bodies were bloated beyond recognition. |
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