SEAN CALLEBS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): A grim sign, and the only indication that, today, yet another body has been removed from a New Orleans home, nearly six months after Katrina.
DR. LOUIS CATALDIE, LOUISIANA STATE CORONER: Put this in the person’s mouth.
CALLEBS: Normally, doctors would use forensic techniques to try to identify the body. But the state medical examiner, Dr. Louis Cataldie, says he no longer has the equipment. Why? FEMA built this enormous new morgue about an hour north of New Orleans to do just this kind of examination on what authorities feared would be 10,000 to 20,000 people killed in the storm. It cost $17 million.
But after examining only 60 bodies, FEMA shut it down Monday, saying its work was done, and keeping it open would cost $230,000 a week.
CATALDIE: Well, would I like to have the use of the facility? Sure. Do I understand that there’s a timeline and there’s a — you know, they — they need to pull their stuff out? Absolutely.
CALLEBS: FEMA officials didn’t want to go on camera, but pointed out that they told Cataldie in December they would be closing the site. Still, FEMA has no clear plans for the facility, so the bunkbeds, washers and dryers and gym equipment for its staff are being mothballed — the high-tech autopsy gear already shipped out.
Cataldie says, he thought, by now, most of the 2,100 people still listed as missing would have been accounted for. But, as it turns out, he’s still expecting to find scores more bodies.
CATALDIE: We certainly feel we have, depending on rough, rough estimates, 60 to 100 bodies in the Ninth Ward, so, folks that need to be recovered.
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Continue reading “Black Bodies Remain Still…. Part III”
