![]() And each stop could mean the loss of valuable information. The sheer size of the affected areas meant each body might have to go through several checkpoints on its way to the morgue. Kenyon workers had to walk through hospitals where the power had been knocked out. Eventually, procedures were set, with the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals taking the lead and Jensen’s company receiving a contract to coordinate the work in the heaviest-hit parishes.Ĭollecting, identifying and counting the dead was an emotionally wrenching, often gruesome, sometimes thankless job. The official effort to recover bodies had stalled as local and federal agencies decided who would do so - and how. “That week was critical, and it was wasted on bureaucracy,” Jensen said in a telephone interview. He’d previously sent around 10 workers to Louisiana to help recover bodies, but they’d been sitting idle in their temporary residence at a Baton Rouge funeral home for a week. He is the CEO of Kenyon International Emergency Services, which helps track deaths after disasters worldwide. Jensen arrived about a week after the storm. Like many post-Katrina efforts, the project to count the dead was hampered by natural and institutional obstacles. News outlets headlined the latest counts of the dead and occasionally showed grisly images of bodies floating in flooded neighborhoods. FEMA ordered 25,000 body bags for the New Orleans area.Īlthough the losses never reached those levels, death in New Orleans was inescapable in the weeks after the levees failed - for its residents, for responders and for a horrified nation. A FEMA simulation of what would happen if a similar hurricane struck the area had put the number at more than 60,000. Ray Nagin, the mayor at the time, said the death toll in the city could be as high as 10,000. In the days after floodwaters poured into parts of New Orleans, it seemed as though the loss of life could number in the tens of thousands. The reason we don’t know how many people died as a result of Katrina is almost entirely because we don’t know how many people died in Louisiana. ![]() New Orleans took the biggest hit wind, rain and the rising Gulf waters breached structurally flawed levees in Lake Pontchartrain, submerging 80 percent of the city by Aug. ![]() The storm was eventually blamed for deaths in seven states, including as far north as Ohio. Katrina killed 14 people in Florida before sweeping through the Gulf of Mexico and slamming into southeastern Louisiana on Aug.
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