Editorial: Grisly reminders of Katrina

Thursday, April 13, 2006 | 7:14 a.m.

It has been seven months since Hurricane Katrina struck the nation's Gulf Coast, killing more than 1,000 people, causing billions in damage and laying bare a host of economic, social and administrative ills.

And the bodies of its victims continue to emerge. According to a recent story by The New York Times, the search for hurricane victims' bodies in New Orleans was left to victims' families or friends, as federal aid for the searches stopped in November and didn't resume until March 2 after the Federal Emergency Management Agency approved additional funding.

One 26-year-old man told the Times of how a relative found his mother's body in February, pinned beneath a moldering sofa in her Lower Ninth Ward home. Orange markings on the woman's house showed it had been searched in September.

At least 14 storm victims' bodies have been found since mid-February, the Times said. They were wedged in attics or under piles of wreckage. They have been partially eaten by animals, skeletonized or are missing limbs.

These are not images from a developing nation that hasn't the resources to deal with such a catastrophe. These people died in one of the world's richest, most powerful nations, where the government boasts of having agencies devoted to this kind of disaster.

Although former FEMA chief Michael Brown has been replaced, glitches appear to remain.

According to the Times, FEMA closed the temporary morgue for handling the storms' dead eight weeks after the late August storm. Bodies now are stored in a refrigerated truck 80 miles away in Baton Rouge.

It would seem that federal and local authorities could find a more dignified way to handle the remains of these victims.

With the start of the 2006 hurricane season less than two months away, we must remember that people remain missing from last year, and some are presumed dead. Let them serve as reminders to FEMA that it still has improvements to make.