A month after Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Louisiana coast, coroners have positively identified just 32 of the nearly 800 corpses collected at a temporary morgue, officials said Wednesday. Only about a third of the recovered bodies have been even tentatively identified.
In the first public accounting of the dead, the state’s chief medical examiner acknowledged that some victims may never be identified, and for many others the date and cause of death may never be known.
“These are horrible times,” Dr. Louis Cataldie, the medical examiner in charge of the effort, told reporters. “It’s extremely frustrating.”
Forensic experts said the effort has been compromised by the sheer scale of flooding over hundreds of square miles, the destruction of medical and dental records, the loss of physical evidence, and the rapid deterioration of corpses in toxic water and subtropical heat and humidity. Many victims lived in low-income areas where medical and dental care was often poor or haphazard.
Even those medical and dental records that weren’t destroyed by floodwaters have to be examined by epidemiologists to ensure that they aren’t contaminated, Cataldie said.
“It’s a much more difficult and time-consuming process than it would be under normal conditions,” said Terry Edwards, a Texas funeral director serving as operations chief of the temporary morgue in St. Gabriel, La., where 783 bodies have been examined and stored in freezer trailers.
In addition to 896 Katrina deaths reported in Louisiana, 220 people died in Mississippi and 19 in four other Southern states.
Dr. Frank Minyard, the coroner of Orleans Parish, said gunshot wounds have been found in seven bodies. He said a woman appeared to have been strangled with an extension cord. But distinguishing homicides and suicides will be difficult.
Ten corpses were recovered from the Louisiana Superdome and four from the city’s convention center, all of them adults, Cataldie said. But contrary to published reports, he said, none of the cases involved homicides.
“There have been some children recovered, but thank God there haven’t been that many.”
Of the 340 corpses Louisiana officials have tentatively identified, most came from hospitals and nursing homes. Almost all of the 32 victims identified by state officials Wednesday were found in nursing homes or hospitals, Cataldie said.
