CNN: Katrina victims yet to be identified: DNA testing hasn't begun

Katrina victims yet to be identified
Three months after storm, DNA testing hasn't begun
Wednesday, November 30, 2005


NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (CNN) -- Up to 200 bodies of people killed by Hurricane Katrina remain unidentified because DNA testing has not begun, CNN has learned.

New Orleans coroner Dr. Frank Minyard expressed outrage that the process was stalled because the state of Louisiana had not signed a contract with a firm that would do the testing.

"It's extremely frustrating," he said, given that so many dentists' offices were wiped out in the flood along with their dental records, which are commonly used to identify bodies.

"We have to rely on DNA and it should have been done, at least started, a month ago," he said.

Three months after the storm ravaged New Orleans and the Gulf Coast -- and on the day that the hurricane season officially ends -- many of the bodies discovered in Louisiana remain at a makeshift morgue....


http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/11/30/katrina.dna/index.html

die in new york and a nation mourns and every freakin splinter is DNA tested and funding is no question

die in louisiana and the nation turns its back and there is not even funding arranged until late november w FEMA trying to make every excuse for not providing the $$$ sooner, in case they haven't noticed, we have a disaster here, the state is freakin broke and can't order anything done w.out fed $$$

what doubt is left that this country hates the working man and those who do the hard dirty work of this country, the oil drilling, the refining, the ports

what doubt is left that families are honored in lip service but when you have a state where extended families actually live then it's too bad, bunky, we don't have time for you

louisiana ought to secede from this sick excuse of a "united" states and take all its oil and gas with

i knew it was bad when during the catastrophe they paused for commercial breaks, i didn't have to watch freakin advertisements while people were dying in the world trade center

A few days ago I was reading an article about displaced victims of Katrina. The story was about a family now living in Denton, Texas, which they are not sure how much longer they will be there.

It appears they will be denied assistance because of a prior drug conviction of the husband.



He has already paid his debt for that crime, yet he is still being punished.

It's amazing they can keep track of prior drug offenses but can't find other records.

This is the link to the article I read
http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=10660

This link is from a search, it is an appeal to Congress
http://www.naacpldf.org/content.aspx?article=724

The remains of those unfortunates were treated as holy relics, almost, while New Orleans continues to be brushed aside. A stark example of how money, race, class, and politics (terrorism vs natural disaster) dominate everything.

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/008679.html

A new report by the Rand Institute for Social Justice says that victims of the 9/11 attacks received a total of $31.2 billion in compensation, averaging out to 3.1 million per victim.

Insurers paid 51 percent of the overall total, or about $19.6 billion. The government distributed $15.8 billion, or 42 percent, and charities paid $2.7 billion, or 7 percent.

"Victims" does not refer only to family members of those killed. It also covers businesses, emergency workers, first responders, and displaced residents, workers who lost their jobs, and those who suffered emotional problems or were exposed to environmental dangers.

...more...

It always seemed to me that it was blood money paid to cover-up the crime that *Co either LIHOPed or MIHOPed in the US.

The 9/11 victims were compensated/lionized/etc./etc. because Bush
*NEEDED* them to save his rapidly-failing presidency. By turning
them into the world's biggest martyrs, he was able to use them
for his next five years of propaganda.

By comparison, the Katrina disaster is just a PR disaster for
Shrub, so the less it's talked about and the sooner it's swept
under the rug, the better for Bush.

Tesha

most of them came out of the deal very wealthy. It costs a lot to keep people from asking too many questions.

You live in that part of the country that *DESPISES* government,
especially the big kind that comes from Washington, D.C..

So when it turns out that there's very little government to organize
any of the stuff that (obviously) needs doing, why does any of this
surprise you?

Tesha

and continues even to this day . . . the difference? . . . the 9/11 victims were generally affluent whites, while the NO victims were generally poor blacks . . . the discrepancy is both obvious and disgusting . . .

the latest report from dmort says 46 percent white, 48 percent black, the rest other

the people i know who were killed weren't poor blacks, they were white, one a business owner, the other couple landlords who owned several houses

don't believe the hype and don't repeat arguments that make us sound ill-informed because it makes us too easy to discredit

it ain't black versus white and we don't benefit from creating a race war down here when we are all in need

it is the classic north/south divide, the north takes our resources and doesn't give a damn abt our people, black, white, or asian

i find it v. disturbing that when you google for the death toll, all that comes to the top is junk or old counts, i saw a google pick mentioning "dozens" dead in katrina, hell, sounds like bartcop

but if you monitor nola.com, every few days they put the official toll and the racial and age breakdown

it is striking that katrina was a war on the old, the dead are v. skewed toward the elderly

i'll post the next link when it comes up, altho i already know since it doesn't satisfy people's wish to believe this can only happen to the "other" that it will sink like a stone like most threads i start, sigh

re: 9/11. Nearly half of the remains were never identified, after more than 3 years of analysis. So, before the inevitable comparisons to 9/11 commence, quite a bit more time needs to pass.

the exploiter takes the rich resources and gives little or nothing back

we were promised and paid for cat 3 levees, army corps of engineers cheated and didn't build to design

the thieves should be jailed and proper levees erected, end of discussion

if they don't wanna do that, hell, let us go

i'm told the safety record of the panama canal is actually better now it's controlled by panama, it makes you stop and think, what do we get from "united" states except right to die in their wars

Anthrax was found in NYC. The guy was a high risk sex offender and he had kidnapped three little girls, and the van the guy used had anthrax biles. The little girls played with the 'angel dust' but did not die. The criminal guy died....etc. The anthrax came from several Louisiana Labs. A technician from the lab stole the biles of anthrax to sell on the black market.

The guy confessed that it was not only anthrax but ebola, etc. weaponized chemicals and infected lab animals that were let lose by labs when all the power failed. The show touched on the many high risk offenders missing from jail, and the hundreds of little children still missing from the Katrina disaster. That was pretty real and powerful. GOOD JOB BROWNIE!

yes, we do have a lot of those labs, as we have many good people expert in this area, however, the infected lab animals have escaped before (several times) in covington area and no one has been infected

not even rumors of such a thing happening and once the escaped primates were found on the campus of a christian school

i dislike having such a lab in a large town like covington but it seems to be safe enough despite the escapes -- and it's jobs, good jobs for highly educated people

what makes me mad is some in gov't think we're dumping grounds for THEIR trash, after the anthrax attack, they had the nerve to retire the probable culprit to a job at LSU, the anthrax expert at LSU looked into it, discovered the man did not have the phD or other credentials he claimed to have (making it probable he was w. CIA or another gov't entity that allowed him to get clearance even tho his degrees were fake) and he barred the man from the lab and got him run out of the state

it burns my ass that they assume that if it's louisiana, we're all stupid, even in areas where WE are the experts

things are falling apart...

It's a slow spiral down, and then one day you wake up in the gutter.

The United States has lost a major city, thousands of people have been killed, and the rest of the nation carries on as if nothing has happened.

Our diabetes is raging out of control, we've just had a foot amputated, we're stealing money from our kids to buy cheap vodka, but don't worry, everything is okay, we'll make ourselves presentable in time for Christmas.

..in the long run, i think things will get better. we are a resiliant people.

If many of the dead remain just "missing," the actual death toll ("negligient homicide" charges to Admin's handling of crisis is diminished)...also, if Dead are never formally declared that way, imagine how MANY truly "dead" people will be voting in the next few Republican-fixed elections. The disbursement of the living Katrina victims even, is going to give (those truly counting)...a HUGE list of people whose identities they can use to vote Repug.

Regarding identifying/counting the dead, I am also troubled by the large number of "missing children" from Katrina. As we know, most parents would do anything humanly possible NOT to be separated from their children during a crisis. So how did all these children get separated from their parents, and surprisingly survive on their own...separated from their parents? If the kids survived, in most cases, the parents clutching them, protecting them...did also. Something here is just NOT right...when counting, identifying the "dead."

That THREE months have passed, this is STILL not tallied, and "Brownie" is now in a "Crisis Management" job...is truly a sin.

stopped. The person he was talking to didn't know, but someone ought to ask. Rove is in charge of the fed's recovery efforts. Maybe someone should ask the administration why they can't even bother to collect or bury the dead down there.

Another outrage in a long series of outrages against the working class people of this country.

FEMA, La. outsource Katrina body count to firm implicated in body-dumping scandals

Miriam Raftery

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has hired Kenyon International to set up a mobile morgue for handling bodies in Baton Rouge, Louisiana following Hurricane Katrina, RAW STORY has learned.

Kenyon is a subsidiary of Service Corporation International (SCI), a scandal-ridden Texas-based company operated by a friend of the Bush family. Recently, SCI subsidiaries have been implicated in illegally discarding and desecrating corpses.

Louisiana governor Katherine Blanco subsequently inked a contract with the firm after talks between FEMA and the firm broke down. Kenyon's original deal was secured by the Department of Homeland Security.
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In other words, FEMA and then Blanco outsourced the body count from Hurricane Katrina -- which many believe the worst natural disaster in U.S. history -- to a firm whose parent company is known for its "experience" at hiding and dumping bodies.

More:
http://rawstory.com/news/2005/FEMA_outsources_Katrina_body_count_to_firm_implicated_in_bodydumping_scan_0913.html