Bungled Records of Storm Deaths Renew Anguish

BATON ROUGE, La., Nov. 11 - The Parrs and the Arceneauxs, friends for more than three decades, died together during Hurricane Katrina in the Arceneaux home on Fable Drive in the town of Meraux, east of New Orleans in St. Bernard Parish. All four of them were huddled together, wearing life vests.

That much, their children thought, was straightforward. Until the bodies were returned to them from the central morgue at St. Gabriel, La., and the death certificates arrived.

The death certificate for Norman Parr, 69, said he died in New Orleans, while Carol Parr, 59, was said to have perished on Fable Drive, but at the wrong address. Mr. Parr's certificate lists his death as "Hurricane Katrina Related" but also adds that it was due to "cardiovascular disease" and "decomposition." Likewise, Ms. Parr's certificate cited decomposition as a cause of death, though it also noted she had drowned.

.....

"And the director of the federal mortuary team at the Find Family Call Center, responsible for communicating with the families of victims, was arrested last week on charges that he had solicited sex in a public park in Baton Rouge."

Much more
<http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/13/national/nationalspecial/13certificate.html?hp&ex=1131944400&en=8286c30d75db0716&ei=5094&partner=homepage>

scandalous I say..but are we surprised?

Dr. Minyard and his counterpart in St. Bernard Parish, Bryan J. Bertucci -

"I question decomposition being on a death certificate," Dr. Cataldie said. "It is not a cause of death."

Could this be ANY more obvious?

I've been taking all kinds of meds so that I don't develop decomp. My grandparents all died from it, and I am pretty sure it's hereditary. Damn that ole decomp.
:crazy:

/my anger has numbed into total, whacked-out insanity
//not a violent person, but I want to personally strangle every bastard who continues to screw New Orleans

with the decomp photo on the front cover exposing this scandal?

Needs to be done.

to getting a handle on the number of dead in New Orleans due to this hurricane:

Lack of stenographers, equipment delaying Katrina autopsy reports
11/2/2005, 5:54 p.m. CT
By MARY FOSTER
The Associated Press

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Doctors at the morgue in St. Gabriel have completed 500 autopsies on bodies recovered following Hurricane Katrina, but officials or families hoping to obtain the results have a long wait ahead of them.

"Only three or four have been typed so far," said Orleans Parish coroner Frank Minyard, who oversees the autopsies. "We only have one lady typing them up. She lives in Slidell and we have to use a Pony Express system to get the autopsies to her. It's going to be a very slow process."

Minyard's staff was cut by two-thirds in the wake of the hurricane, he said, including the clerks who would normally type up the reports.
(snip/...)

http://www.nola.com/newsflash/weather/index.ssf?/base/news-20/1130957642158801.xml&storylist=hurricane

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This problem will assist the general confusion so well, won't it?

It will be so easy to conceal the number of people who actually died directly in relation to the hurricane and the flood. _Bush's administration should have brought the relief any other administration would have provided IMMEDIATELY.

wiped off the map, it was not, indeed, all of st. tammany parish is reporting only 6 or 7 storm deaths, while this has surely got to be an undercount, it is not a case of every home standing in slidell was destroyed as we feared at the peak of the storm when all of the instruments were destroyed by the eye amd we had no ability to get in touch w. slidell

a great many neighborhoods and businesses in slidell were indeed destroyed but it is far from being wiped off the map

:cry: :cry: :cry:

I don't find anything truly shocking in the article. Unfortunate, maybe. I have no doubt that the information provided the survivors was disturbing, but the fact that decomposition or, say, hysterectomy, was noted probably means nothing more than these were noted as helps, or hindrances to body identification, or identification of the cause of death. There are probably three people trying to autopsy hundreds of decomposed bodies. I understand that a neat and precise "cause of death" is of great importance to grieving loved ones, yet I am amazed that these bodies are being autopsied at all. The real crime here is that the actual numbers of deaths has been concealed from us all. Workers at the morgue are no doubt far more bogged down than this article indicates. IMHO

A working "stiff" or a retiree with a pre-existing health condition limiting the amount he or she gets in case of natural death may have additional accidental or catastrophic death insurance in which drowning or death due to crash, storm, fire, or flood may be covered, but "decomposition" is probably not. Such insurance is not uncommon amongst those who work in potentially dangerous situations or do a lot of commuting to get to work.

Autopsies are critical when it comes to insurance claims. If "decomposition" is on the death certificate instead of, say, drowning, the families of some of these unfortunate victims may not be able to claim that extra $50 - $500K to that the victim had already paid for and wanted to pass on to his or her family members to cover the expenses of picking up the pieces, dealing with the estate, and moving on.

This is yet another major crime that is currently in progress with the Katrina (and probably Rita and Wilma) debacle - the fleecing of policy holders and their survivors by the insurance companies with the support of government officials.
And it's not a new one; many of the families of survivors of the various September 11th terrorist attacks went through the same problems, even if parts of victim's bodies were found and identified...

Insurance companies will do everything to avoid paying out if there's any little inconsistency they can find.

Haele

and not intended to refer to the cause of death. In fact, that is pretty obvious. As for the fellow "soliciting sex" my first thought was that the guy was probably gay and looking for a good time. Now if he had been soliciting sex with a minor, I'd have been pissed off.

Sometimes I really think we are trying to hard to turn everything into a nightmare issue. This time I simply don't agree.

Damned shocking. In fact, I'd say it's probably some kinda medical miracle. I hope they write these incidents up for peer-reviewed medical journals.

WTF????? :mad:

these people?

This sounds similar - "Death by Decomposition". Every day, the Monty Python group seem more like futurists than comedians.

(Not that the movie I mentioned was a Python movie.)

they could have written, "Rotting corpse found laying over low fence being eaten by dogs and birds who specifically love the softer parts, such as the eyes.."

SICK bastards.

And the numbers will be wrong too.. I'm willy to bet a good 10,000 people were MURDERED there by Bush and the records will be "lost" , etc..

it sounded like these were older people, but old does not automatically mean poor in meraux, louisiana, it just means that they were older & thought they would be safer riding out the storm at home than driving around in traffic

the people i know personally who died weren't poor, nor are they on the official list, in one case i understand why not, he died in evacuation, they're not counting those as katrina dead

the other case i don't understand as this couple drowned and was found in their own home in gentilly, so they are clearly katrina dead, yes, they were quite old, but they didn't die of old age, they died of the london canal floodwall giving way and drowning their home, so i feel they should be counted

i think we need to call for a monument that lists all the names of the dead, clearly it is going to take years to make a complete and correct list, and right now survivors have other things to do than ask authorities why their dead loved one is being given some false cause of death, but ultimately we do need to know the true toll and to respect our lost

They were just under water and slimed to death. last i heard people do the best they can in these circumstances..Yes I feel sorry for the victims and their families.the fed's should already have DNA contract for the laboratory!:wtf:

If you check the Katrina research that's been compiled in various places . . .

Many incentives of Bush admin to minimize the number of deaths, particularly those properly attributed to dehydration, starvation & the like (i.e., due to FEMA delay).

Much evidence that the numbers of deaths have been deliberately hidden and understated and the causes of death obscured . . .

Some info here: http://www.katrinatruth.info/Chapter%206.htm

Mr. Bush, Mr Chertoff - The world is watching. <>

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