Storms Raised the Dead in Louisiana
By Lily Koppel
THE NEW YORK TIMES BATON ROUGE, LA.
The living were not the only ones uprooted by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The force of the storms literally raised the dead from their resting places in peaceful parish cemeteries, sending nearly a thousand coffins and vaults careening around the Gulf Coast and creating a macabre puzzle for coroners and morticians.
Storm surges as high as 20 feet transformed tombs, coffins and two-ton concrete vaults into virtual ships that traveled for miles before landing in front yards, fields and swamps. One barnacle-encrusted vault found underwater in a marsh is thought to contain a victim of the 1957 Hurricane Audrey.
A coffin showed up on the lawn of Dr. Bryan Bertucci, the coroner of St. Bernard Parish, and a deputy sheriff informed him that a coffin containing the deputy’s grandmother, still wearing her pink gown, had been found out of her grave in a cemetery.
“Coffins were torn out of mausoleums like a child’s blocks,” said Dr. Louis Cataldie, the state emergency medical director. “There are a lot. It is very disturbing to a lot of families who want their loved one. It is very disturbing.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/25/national/nationalspecial/25coffins.html