Legacy MattersTwo small towns will soon become two big morgues.
In Mississippi, Bay St. Louis, a small town of 8000 where Norma Singlet, a grandmotherly woman faces the grim job of identifying neighbors
She will be aided by DMORTs, Disaster Mortuary Assistance Teams from FEMA, who will conduct a grid search, town by town, to find and retrieve bodies. "Some of the discoveries are hideous." What keeps people working in such circumstances? "In my opinion, it's determination and love of your fellow man," said Singlet.
In Louisiana, it's St Gabriel, a small town of 5300, outside of Baton Rouge, reports the New York Times.
"Our goal is to do everything we can under the circumstances to treat each body with as much dignity and respect as we possibly can," said Bob Johannessen, a spokesman for the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals, which is managing the mortuary operation with the Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Team of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. "We're trying to treat them all as individuals."
Many of the dead on the Gulf Coast will never be identified.
Technorati Tags: flood aid, Hurricane Katrina
Posted by Jill Fallon at September 6, 2005 11:03 AM | Permalink