Just yesterday, nearly six months after Hurricane Katrina, yet another body was removed from a New Orleans home. Normally, doctors would use advanced forensic techniques to try to identify the body.
But Louisiana's medical examiner, Dr. Louis Cataldie, says he no longer has the necessary equipment. That's because FEMA has closed the enormous, $17 million morgue it built about an hour drive north of New Orleans. Cataldie was using the morgue's high-tech equipment to help him the identify the bodies of Katrina victims.
Just after Katrina hit, officials feared a death toll upwards of 10,000 or 20,000. But after only 60 bodies were examined at the facility, FEMA closed the morgue on Monday, saying its work was done and that keeping it open would cost $230,000 every week. The bunk beds, washers and dryers, and gym equipment for its staff are being mothballed. The state-of-the-art autopsy gear already has been shipped out.
Cataldie says he thought most of the 2,100 people still listed as missing would have been documented by now. But, as it turns out, Cataldie thinks there are another 60 to 100 bodies still buried in the rubble of New Orleans' Ninth Ward. With the closing of the morgue, Cataldie hopes to set up shop soon in a washed-out funeral home in New Orleans.
