Orleans Parish Coroner on finding Katrina remains: "There are more people out there"
In a press conference to begin a fund raising effort to build a memorial and mausoleum so 100 forgotten victims of Katrina can finally be given the respect and dignity of a decent burial, Orleans Parish Coronor Dr. Frank Minyard stated there are more bodies to be found in New Orleans. My transcript from part of the WGNO-TV 26 video report...
REPORTER PAUL MURPHY: They are the forgotten victims of Katrina. 100 bodies now warehoused in a nondescript building near downtown New Orleans. 70 have names, 30 have yet to be identified, none have been claimed by their families. Orleans Coroner Dr. Frank Minyard says there are more bodies yet to be discovered.
DR FRANK MINYARD: We have found 25 or 26 I believe remains since a year, in the past year, since last April. And so we know that this is going to keep happening because there are more people out there.
In a WWL video report Dr. Minyard stated...
And there's houses that have not been touched.
In the WGNO report Ted George of the Katrina Memorial Corporation stated this.....
We have these as a community, these dead, these remains that need to be put to rest in a dignified manner. And as long as that is undone we have in my view an open wound that still needs to be healed.
We are at Day 605 since Katrina and there are still homes untouched and more losses yet to occur. I never thought I'd see such a thing in America.
You can go HERE if you would like to contribute to the memorial.
UPDATE: HERE is a print version of the WGNO video content. There is no permalink for the WGNO video. At present it can be found by scrolling down through videos list to side of featured video on home page. It is titled: Katrina Memorial-Paul Murphy reporting 4/24/07.
The WWL video can be found HERE . It is the second video listed.
Yeah, we're still finding folks here in NYC too, 6 years after 9/11. They've been paved over, left in manholes, and used to fill in potholes. They treat the dead of 9/11, and Katrina, just like they treat those they sentenced to die in Iraq.
Posted by: Fixer | April 25, 2007 at 05:01
I can understand finding pieces of bone of WTC victims years after the fact, but I cannot understand that they didn't even send around the national guard or local police house-to-house in flooded areas after Katrina just to check on people. I would call that criminal negligence.
Posted by: Tlazolteotl | April 25, 2007 at 12:07
especially since we have trained dogs for this.
it would be interesting to see if this kind of shit happened way back when after galvaston hurricane. i am quite sure bodies then turned up months later, but that was then.
Posted by: pansypoo | April 25, 2007 at 12:22
The memorial design seems pretty uninspired, and doesn't really speak to the spirit of NOLA, only the horror of the hurricane. It also doesn't address the true cause of all those deaths - the failed Corps levees and floodwalls, and the criminally negligent federal response.
Bryan at Off & Running has a great point - why not let some of the great artists in NOLA design it? http://offrunning.blogspot.com/2007/04/memorial-envisioned-in-shape-of-katrina.html
Posted by: slim | April 25, 2007 at 14:35
So reassuring in this age of Big Brother watching us all. I guess this only applies to certain segments of the living.
Posted by: Marco | April 25, 2007 at 14:55