Reply #28: RELATED: NYT: "Weeks Later, Most Storm Victims Lie Unnamed" [View All]

[Nothing Without Hope]

They even mention that some people see this as a way to hide embarrassing facts. It is also, of course, outrageously, horribly, massively callous. You can bet the rich white victims were not handled this way.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x1827484
thread title: NYT: Weeks Later, Most Storm Victims Lie Unnamed
Pirate Smile LBN Forum Tue Oct-04-05 11:27 PM

excerpt:from this NYT news (not op/ed) article:

BATON ROUGE, La., Oct. 4 - In a country that cherishes the names of the dead, reads them aloud, engraves them in stone and stitches them into quilts, it is odd that Hurricane Katrina's victims remain, more than a month later, largely anonymous.

There has been no accounting of their age, sex and race, nor of how they died or where they were found. As for how they lived, it is difficult to find even a Web site paying tribute to individual victims. With 972 deaths confirmed and the search for bodies declared complete, the state has released only 61 bodies and made the names of only 32 victims public.

-snip-
Like any silence, the one blanketing Louisiana's dead is ripe for interpretation - to some, including family members who wait in anguish, it is further proof of bureaucratic bungling or a lack of regard for the poor blacks who doubtless make up many of the victims. To others, it is a deliberate attempt to shield an embarrassing truth from view.

State officials, still in crisis mode, say compiling and releasing data about the dead is simply not a priority. They say several factors have contributed to delays: criminal investigations that have forced them to perform more autopsies than expected; the arrival of a second hurricane, Rita, which once again displaced their staff; and the condition bodies were in after spending days or weeks in the heat or water. The New Orleans coroner, Frank Minyard, has complained that pathologists from around the country have volunteered to help but that he awaits a trailer from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to house them. But critics say that the state officials have not released bodies whose identities are obvious and that Louisiana has imposed too tough a standard on confirming the names of victims.

It is also outrageous that they are claiming such a very small death toll. I do not believe it. Even early on the morticians were told by DMort to expect up to 40,000 bodies:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x4674804