Coroner Faces Grim Job of Identifying Neighbors

The FEMA search and recovery teams follow poorly drawn maps. They put in 14-hour days, slogging through mud that is in some cases two feet deep, and climbing piles of debris, under a blazing hot sky. "You just line up and start walking, and find an odor," said Capt. Rob Trautwein, member of a unit from Hoover, Ala. "Seven days into this, your nose is your biggest clue."

Trautwein stood with the rest of his crew at the beach, trying to scrub the mud and nastiness from his boots with the salt water of the Mississippi Sound. Every now and then, amid the macabre discoveries, they are heartened to find a survivor. And, sometimes, more than one. One unit found 28 people in an attic. On Saturday evening, a Pennsylvania unit found two others, barely alive, clinging to a wrecked shrimp boat in a canal.

They find a lot of dead animals, but some live ones. The Hoover unit discovered a bedraggled and half-starved stray dog, and named him Lucky. They intend to take him home with their unit when they go. They also found a mud-encrusted kitten, and gently bathed her in the gulf waters.

On Saturday a search unit from Montgomery County, Md., brought in the body of a man in his sixties discovered after his neighbors smelled something rotting in the rubble on their street. He was wearing a life preserver.

The unit has been digging out bodies since Wednesday. But given the blasted wreckage confronting them, its commander, Chief John Tippett, 47, of Damascus, said he expected to find more. "There have been victims, but not as many as there could be," he said. "We've been very relieved at not finding larger losses of life."

On a given day, Tippett and his unit search 40 square blocks. When a body is discovered, they radio their command center at a Sonic fast-food stop on Highway 90, announcing their "find" along with their global positioning coordinates. The message is relayed up the chain of command to the Emergency Operations Center, and law enforcement and the county coroner are notified.

They then spray-paint the coordinates, along with a code indicating a death, in vivid orange paint somewhere on the location. They may use a door, or a roof. But sometimes there is nothing but splinters. So they spray-paint the street. An orange V or a D means there is a body.

Next, they take a couple of basic photographs for the coroner. "The photos are because they are overwhelmed, and it may take them a couple of days to recover the body," Tippett said. "And they like to see it as close to the time of death as possible." They look for anything that might help identify the body, whether a picture or an object.

At the Edmond Fahey Funeral Home in Bay St. Louis, Edmond Fahey is in no position to bury his neighbors. The ground is still too wet, the cemetery is a wreck, and there is no water or electricity in the town.

Fahey does not even have a dark suit. His home and possessions were lost in the hurricane. So were the homes of every member of his staff. On Monday, a week after the hurricane struck, he stood on the porch of the funeral parlor, shirtless, a stricken expression on his face. "Devastation is not a word to describe it," he said. "It's worse."

Fahey and his family have been conducting the town's funerals for three generations. He rode out the storm inside his funeral parlor, along with his staff, Stiglet and an embalmed body. They stayed because they suspected they would be needed. "People know where to find me," Stiglet says. "They know they can find me at the funeral home."

The parlor took on a lot of water, but it stood. Fahey and his staff have been living there ever since. "We've been in contact with a few families, but no funerals are arranged," Fahey said. "It'll be a while before we can conduct a service."

All his hearses are ruined. "They look good," Fahey said, "but they don't run." They stood parked at the curb, their engines dead.