For funeral directors and ordinary citizens alike, the grief of losing a relative has been compounded by the agonizing search for their remains.
Malcolm Gibson, a New Orleans funeral director, said he has tried for more than two weeks to recover the body of his 83-year-old uncle, who died in his home during the storm and whose remains were delivered to the morgue by state police. But authorities would not confirm that they even had the body, he said.
Earline Eleby Coleman drove from Houston on Sept. 5 to recover the body of her 78-year-old mother, who died at the New Orleans convention center in the arms of another family member. She was told she had to wait for confirmation that the body was even at the morgue. She is still waiting.
Wayne Dean Ryburn spent 10 days chasing his elderly mother's corpse from hospitals to morgues to parish coroner's offices. He finally recovered it from St. Gabriel in rural Louisiana with the help of his sister, a registered nurse who had attended to the dying woman.
And Cal Johnson, a New Orleans funeral director, said he had faxed information to the morgue about an employee, a 75-year-old embalmer who died in his New Orleans home during the hurricane. But even though police took the body to the morgue, Johnson said, he was told that it could not be located.
"I'm past the angry stage," said Reysack, who found his father's body Sept. 11 but has been unable to locate it since officials moved it to the temporary morgue. "It's total loss and total frustration, as if you've got your hands tied and the answer is right there in front of you but you can't get it."
Cataldie, a former medical examiner, acknowledged that identifying and releasing bodies had been painfully slow. Of more than 800 bodies delivered to the St. Gabriel morgue, he said, 32 have been positively identified and 340 have been tentatively identified.
The official death toll in Louisiana from Hurricane Katrina is 932, and more bodies continue to be found.
Because many bodies were not collected for days or weeks, they decomposed in the heat and floodwater, Cataldie said. As a result, some victims will never be identified and their cause of death never known, he said.
Forensic specialists supervised by the Federal Emergency Management Agency are taking X-rays, fingerprints and DNA samples of the corpses, but notifying next-of-kin is being handled by state officials. Their greatest fear is misidentifying a corpse in the deluge of bodies.
