Caskets still missing a year after Rita

[rodeodance]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060923/ap_on_re_us/rita_caskets;_ylt=ArQb1hRm96i0LhZBpu6eEYas0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA3b2NibDltBHNlYwM3MTY-

Caskets still missing a year after Rita

By DOUG SIMPSON, Associated Press Writer 4 minutes ago

CAMERON, La. - A year after Hurricane Rita, the grave at Ebenezer Baptist Cemetery sits empty, half-filled with stagnant water, its vault and casket yanked out of the ground and carried north by churning floodwater from the Gulf of Mexico.


Across southwest Louisiana, cemeteries still bear scars from Hurricane Rita like 6-foot rectangular holes in the soil. Hunters and farmers make grim calls to the coroner after stumbling across caskets miles away from the graves.
..........

"In the marsh, duck hunters going to their duck blinds, they're still finding caskets," he said.

Hunter said his office has recovered 325 caskets and human remains the storm pulled up from the earth. One casket was found 34 miles from its grave, he said.
..........
Local funeral homes have started putting metal bracelets on the deceased, and attaching metal discs to vaults and caskets, stamped with the person's name..........

[NOLADEM]

1. I see caskets and vaults often when fishing since the storm

Hundreds or thousands were dispersed south of I-10, especially in St. Bernard, toward Violet.

These areas are SO remote and SO inaccessible due to swampy terrain, it is unrealistic to expect many more to be recovered. Many are simply submersed.

During the initial days following the water's retreat, as we would drive through St. Bernard, you would prop up the crypt or coffin so passers-by could see if the vault had been inspected or not, to make it easier for those searching for loved ones.

More times than not, the remains were no longer there, but it was creepy none the less.

Now, the recovered crypts sit as unceremoniously stacked cord wood at the front of the mausoleums and grave yards. Some in downtown New Orleans sit in unairconditioned warehouses awaiting a burial which the city estimates could take another year.

The scope of this disaster is hard to overstate. It is amazing what has become commonplace for myself and Mrs. NOLADEM.

Cameron, south of Lake Charles, was COMPLETELY destroyed. Shell Beach, Cameron and Creole have less than 5% of pre-storm structures today still standing.

[Suich]

2. I'm not sure what a crypt or vault is...a coffin is inside a casket, right

:shrug:

[NOLADEM]

3. Here, they bury you in a concrete exterior box, outside of your

coffin, to hold you down in the ground, since the water table here wants to make you surface, and modern coffins float.

In weather such as Katrina, where 10-20 foot deep water ran over some above ground cemetaries, the coffin and vault go together downstream or across the road.

I am no mortician, so I may be using some terminology imperfectly, but the concrete box around the coffin will often travel with the lighter coffin.