New Orleans, LA
June, 2009
In their memory���
FEMA���s Disaster Mortuary Operational response Team (DMORT) helped local authorities after Hurricane Katrina. In 2005, DMORT assisted the Orleans Parish coroner with identifying hundreds of storm victims.
The number one killer with Katrina was not drowning. It was not accidental falls. It was the having the exacerbation in other words, making it worse, of a heart condition, or a liver condition, or a lung condition, brain condition, or any kind of a disease that a person had going on was made worse. DMORT had supplied us with everything that we needed. And so we did autopsies on about a thousand, close to a thousand, people from the New Orleans and St. Bernard area and it was something that has never been done before, that many autopsies. And I wish that any coroner who sees this could make sure he at least has the phone number of DMORT, because this is a group of people, professional people. They are dentists, DNA experts, and they are pathologists, xray technicians. Without DMORT we could not have done, I don���t know what would have happened, if we didn���t have DMORT to help us in the identification and notification of next of kin of over 1500 people all over the state. Sometime in 06, around the time we got here, around April or May, FEMA sent us down 215 bodies that were left over from the storm. These bodies were not identified, families were not notified. So in a 2 year period of time, we got 130 to 140 remains identified and their families notified and they came picked them up. But there are 40 remaining that need further DNA studies. We developed a memorial to Katrina in one of the cemeteries here in New Orleans and we raised some money, over a million dollars actually to build 4 mausoleums and a memorial park to these Katrina victims. That is something I���m very proud of because we were able to give them a proper burial and so I���m very satisfied with what FEMA has done for me, for us, and for my city for us to be able to continue our forensic work of solving some of these social human needs, problems of the great city of New Orleans. Thank you.
For more information visit www.FEMA.gov.