Storms Raised the Dead in Louisiana (1000 coffins floating in Gulf/marsh)

[papau]

Storms Raised the Dead in Louisiana


By Lily Koppel
THE NEW YORK TIMES BATON ROUGE, LA.

The living were not the only ones uprooted by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The force of the storms literally raised the dead from their resting places in peaceful parish cemeteries, sending nearly a thousand coffins and vaults careening around the Gulf Coast and creating a macabre puzzle for coroners and morticians.

Storm surges as high as 20 feet transformed tombs, coffins and two-ton concrete vaults into virtual ships that traveled for miles before landing in front yards, fields and swamps. One barnacle-encrusted vault found underwater in a marsh is thought to contain a victim of the 1957 Hurricane Audrey.

A coffin showed up on the lawn of Dr. Bryan Bertucci, the coroner of St. Bernard Parish, and a deputy sheriff informed him that a coffin containing the deputy’s grandmother, still wearing her pink gown, had been found out of her grave in a cemetery.

“Coffins were torn out of mausoleums like a child’s blocks,” said Dr. Louis Cataldie, the state emergency medical director. “There are a lot. It is very disturbing to a lot of families who want their loved one. It is very disturbing.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/25/national/nationalspecial/25coffins.html

[finecraft]

1. The local funeral home was moving some of these yesterday

My window at work overlooks a street that is on the way to the funeral home. I watched a lot of flatbed trucks drive by with closed and broken vaults on them. This went on all day, and they must have moved around 30 vaults. Around noon it finally dawned on me what they were doing.....retriving vaults from the Vermilion Bay marsh that had become dislodged during Hurricane Rita. They were bringing them to the funeral home so the coroner could start the process of identifying the remains in the vaults. It was sad, and kind of creepy at the same time.

[papau]

3. This happened the last time it flooded in NO.

creepy is a good word.

[CatBoreal]

2. Anyone know if Marie Laveau...

...is still in her tomb?

I do not want to think what kind of juju will be floating around if she isn't.