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Subject: Officials Trying to ID Displaced Caskets
Date: Wed, 21 Sep 2005 10:09:28 -0700 (PDT)


This story was sent to you by: Elizabeth Whitaker

This is something else anyone interested in genealogy should be very concerned about.

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Officials Trying to ID Displaced Caskets
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By HOLBROOK MOHR
Associated Press Writer

September 21, 2005, 2:54 AM CDT

JACKSON, Miss. -- As the rumbling of heavy equipment echoes through her once-serene, waterfront cemetery in Biloxi, Kim Powers longs for a day when the dead can rest in peace.

Hurricane Katrina ripped open mausoleums at Southern Memorial Park, sucked caskets out of their tombs, flattened offices and left the entire place looking "like a war zone," she said.

Powers, a partner in Knoxville, Tenn.-based Bridges Funeral Co., said three of the company's cemeteries on the Mississippi coast were heavily damaged by Katrina's punishing storm surge.

Officials from Alabama to New Orleans reported other cemeteries also were damaged, but that caskets remained in place.

In Biloxi, Katrina ripped the doors from concrete mausoleums, exposing the few caskets that remained. Other caskets -- some broken -- were left scattered along the beach among piles of debris.

At least 50 caskets that were displaced from Southern Memorial Park and another 10 that were disinterred at Live Oaks in Pass Christian had not been identified as of Tuesday, Harrison County Coroner Gary Hargrove said.

It could be weeks before officials know exactly how many caskets are missing, he said, adding that one casket was found as recently as Sunday buried in sand and debris on the beach.

"We'll get them back where they belong," he said. "Will we get all of them returned? That's a hard question to answer. The reality is that (some) could have been swept into the Gulf."

Funeral directors and cemetery owners say that the identification process could be painfully slow. Some caskets have information tubes attached to them that identify the remains; others have no identification at all.

Information tubes have been used since the mid-1960s. But floods in the Midwest revealed that identification papers in the tubes don't stand up over time, said Michael Hudgins, manager of the Natchez Trace Funeral Home and Memorial Park in Madison.

Cemeteries often keep descriptions of the caskets so the process of elimination could be used. But, if cemetery offices were destroyed and records were lost, that too could be difficult, said Larry Chedotal, president of the Mississippi Cemetery Association, who also owns two cemeteries in Avondale near New Orleans.

"I'm sure some families can help determine that information, but it's going to be very emotional," he said.

New Orleans' historic cemeteries, known as "cities of the dead," were damaged but displaced caskets from the city's aboveground tombs were not the problem officials originally had feared.

Meanwhile, Powers is anxious to return the disinterred caskets to "their final resting place with as much dignity as they had the first time around."

"These are people's loved ones," she said. "And this was once a beautiful cemetery."
Copyright (c) 2005, The Associated Press

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