Katrina's Unclaimed to Get Hometown Burial

City to Take Custody of Unclaimed Storm Victims

Louis Cataldie, the Louisiana medical officer in charge of identifying victims of Hurricane Katrina, tours the Carville, La., morgue where many were sent. (By Chitose Suzuki -- Associated Press)

NEW ORLEANS -- Inside a fleet of refrigerated trucks parked an hour west of here lie the bodies of more than 200 unidentified or unclaimed victims of Hurricane Katrina.

"Some, we don't know who they are," said Chuck Smith, leader of the federal mortuary effort in Carville, La. "And with some, we can't locate the families, or the families are unable to make provisions."

The question now, five months after the storm, is what to do with the dead.

The makeshift morgue, a joint federal and state effort, is scheduled to close by the end of the month. And like virtually every other challenge facing this flooded metropolis, the funeral tasks have been complicated by the vast scale of the disaster and the difficulties of coordinating local, state and federal efforts.

Initially, state authorities had selected a four-acre cemetery site in Carville, and in preparation for the burials, had graded and planted the ground. A memorial was envisioned there.

But that did not sit well with many in New Orleans who argued that a proper burial includes the sense, spiritual and geographical, of "going home." Most of the dead come from the city.

"I told them we cannot be burying New Orleanians outside of New Orleans," Mayor C. Ray Nagin said of his protests to state officials.

The mayor said he also objected to the proposed use of wooden caskets, which "over time would have disintegrated into the earth," making it difficult to relocate remains if more identifications are made later.

So now the city will take custody of the dead. The trouble is that the city, already struggling with the burdens of hurricane recovery, must now scramble to build a mausoleum for the Katrina victims.

New Orleans officials met last week with FEMA officials to discuss the city's request for financial help to build the mausoleum, which is expected to cost about $400,000. A Federal Emergency Management Agency spokesman said FEMA is prepared to reimburse the city for at least some of the mausoleum expense.

It would be built at a publicly owned cemetery here, said the city's health director, Kevin Stephens, and made of some appropriate material, such as granite. The bodies will be held in metal caskets, and if one of the unidentified bodies within the mausoleum is later identified, it can easily be removed and placed elsewhere for burial.

The city is also working with a corporate donor who may contribute nearly $1 million to a memorial for the victims, Nagin said.