Pace of Corpse Recovery Draws Rebuke

As Hurricane Katrina’s victims continued to decompose on streets and inside homes, Louisiana’s governor lashed out Tuesday at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, saying its failure to recover the dead has forced the state to hire its own contractors to do the job.

“In death as in life, our people deserve more respect than they have received,” Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco said at a news conference here, flanked by state elected officials.

“No one, even those at the highest level, seems to be able to break through the bureaucracy to get this important mission done,” Blanco said. “I am angry and outraged.”

Representatives of Kenyon International Emergency Services Inc. of Houston confirmed that they were entering into a long-term contract to provide the state with 100 to 200 contract workers who specialize in recovering bodies from disaster zones. They said the firm rejected a similar request for a contract from FEMA, citing the federal agency’s failure to provide adequate support for its operations and other shortcomings.

State and federal officials also said Tuesday that they now believed that a significant number of homicide victims were among the dead, including those killed in post-hurricane violence or in alleged acts of criminal negligence, such as the case of the nursing home owners charged with leaving dozens of elderly patients in Katrina’s path.

That will complicate the body recovery effort because local authorities would need to be brought in to gather evidence for possible arrests and prosecutions, the officials said.

But because so many bodies have been left unclaimed and lying out in Louisiana’s heat, humidity and fetid waters, it will be virtually impossible to determine how some died, whether they were killed or by whom, said Blanco spokeswoman Denise Bottcher.

“We’ll probably never know,” she said.

Until now, Blanco, a Democrat, has shied away from criticizing Washington’s response to the hurricane since it hit shore more than two weeks ago. The governor said she decided to go public with her criticism after promises from Washington failed to come through, including a pledge from Michael Chertoff, the secretary of Homeland Security, “that plans would be put in place for a system of ‘recovery with respect.’ ”

Blanco accused FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security of botching the recovery effort by hiring Kenyon and then failing to provide it with the resources needed to do the job.

“Yesterday, Kenyon officials told me that if things don’t change, they would leave as soon as they could professionally pull out,” Blanco said. “While recovery of bodies is a FEMA responsibility, I cannot stand by while this vital operation is not being handled appropriately.”

Teams of Kenyon workers have been working alongside FEMA officials since Sept. 7, after playing a similar role after the tsunami in Asia and the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

But Kenyon’s temporary contract with FEMA was set to expire Tuesday.

Bill Berry, a Kenyon spokesman, was also critical of the FEMA effort but said the company was trying to stay neutral.

Berry said the situation improved in recent days as Louisiana state officials played a greater role in the recovery effort.

And he said Kenyon workers would continue unabated the grisly task of finding the bloated and often unrecognizable corpses.

From there, the bodies are delivered to refrigerated FEMA trucks set up around the region, and then taken to a makeshift morgue near Baton Rouge so FEMA’s Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Teams can try to identify them.

Those identified and claimed by next of kin are then sent back to local mortuaries for burial.

FEMA officials said they were stung by Blanco’s comments, and that under mutually arranged disaster plans, the state of Louisiana was responsible for initial recovery of bodies with assistance from the disaster teams.

“The collection of bodies is not normally a FEMA responsibility. Last week, that plan was modified at the state’s request,” said David Passey, a lead FEMA spokesman for the recovery effort.

According to Passey, state officials said that they were too overwhelmed by the scope of the disaster and that they needed FEMA’s help in finding the many bodies hidden in the nooks and crannies of still-flooded homes and other locations.

FEMA agreed, and last week it called in Kenyon on an emergency basis while long-term arrangements could be made, Passey said.

In a statement Tuesday evening, Blanco extended an olive branch of sorts to those involved in the federal rescue effort after receiving a phone call from Coast Guard Vice Adm. Thad W. Allen, Washington’s newly appointed hurricane recovery czar.

She said Allen called to say the federal government was working hard to quickly recover all bodies and to do so with dignity and respect.

“I deeply appreciate Adm. Allen’s sensitivity and understanding and his call to me this afternoon,” Blanco said.

Meanwhile, bodies continued to surface in New Orleans, and the official death toll rose to 423. Many of the corpses that had been out on the streets for a week or more continued to decompose in plain sight.

In one of New Orleans’ poorest sections, one man was still facedown in the mud on Reynes Street. Another’s foot remained tangled in a tree, his torso over a fence at Flood and Johnson streets. And a woman was still tethered to a tree at Claiborne and Lizardi streets in the Lower 9th Ward days after a Times article Saturday described their condition.

Cotton Howell, the York County, S.C., emergency management director who is helping the body recovery operation, said the New Orleans effort appeared to be plagued by problems.

Howell said that according to federal guidelines, the bodies of the dead should not be left outside in the sun or in warm water because they decompose so quickly that it is much harder and more expensive to identify them. Also, he said, they can create health problems.

“They would certainly be brought” inside, Howell said. “That is the No. 1 thing.”

Howell said he knew that “FEMA is down there pouring resources every day.”

But he said he was troubled by the fact that so many bodies had been left out.

“Even though it is a body, they are still a person,” Howell said. “We get them into a morgue facility so we can take care of preserving their dignity. Away from prying eyes, so they can be afforded some respect in death.”

Times staff writers David Zucchino and Nicholas Riccardi in New Orleans and Ashley Powers in Baton Rouge contributed to this report.