Bodies lie for days awaiting retrieval: FEMA policies limit who can do the job

For 13 days in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the body of Alcede Jackson lay on a porch at 4732 Laurel St., wrapped in a plastic bag and covered in a blanket beneath a sign quoting the evangelist John and commending Jackson to "the loving arms of Jesus.''

Across town, a left turn at Fern Street in the Carrollton neighborhood provided a clear view of the corpse of a man lying face-down on the sidewalk near a vacant lot. He wore blue jeans. His head was uncovered. Residents who witnessed the scene also informed a pair of National Guardsmen stationed on North Claiborne Avenue. They said they knew.

Nearly two weeks after Hurricane Katrina tore a deadly path through the New Orleans area, grim sights like these still dotted the vacant urban landscape as the official number of bodies collected and sent to a makeshift morgue at St. Gabriel rose from Sunday's count of 197 by the Department of Health and Hospitals to 279 on Monday.

With the total expected to rise, Kenyon International Emergency Services, the firm brought in last week by the Federal Emergency Management Agency to help recover corpses, announced Monday that it would not formally extend its short-term agreement to have about 100 people on the ground to aid FEMA and the state in removing the dead from private homes and public areas.

Louisiana officials railed against the overall recovery effort Monday, saying that even with Kenyon on the job, too few people were working to handle the dead. FEMA policy, a spokesman said, prohibited any of the tens of thousands of National Guard troops or municipal police officers on the ground in New Orleans from touching the bodies, except to tag them and report their location to higher authorities.

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin said the slow pace of body removal was disrespectful to the deceased and said he didn't understand the holdup.

"I can't imagine going into a house, and I've got a bloated dead body of my father," he said. "They need to get them out and try to identify them as quickly as possible."

"How long do we want those bodies to sit out there and rot?" asked U.S. Rep. Charlie Melancon, D-Napoleonville, adding that when residents return to check their property in the inundated parishes of St. Bernard and Plaquemines, "they'll get in and see all the bodies on the ground because FEMA can't handle its business."

U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu said the dead must be honored now because "our federal government failed these individuals in life."

The reaction marked the start of a third week of scathing criticism of FEMA, which has been lambasted for its handling of rescue efforts and distribution of aid to evacuees. Ricardo Zuniga, the agency spokesman, said Monday that the recovery of corpses is being handled in a methodical, prudent manner.

FEMA had 3,700 workers deployed across the region Thursday in search and rescue missions, Zuniga said. On the same day, 60 people - 15 teams, each with four experts in handling bodies in disaster scenarios - were assigned to collect corpses from sites identified by military, police or citizens who called in to report where their neighbors or loved ones might be found dead, he said. He did not have more recent statistics.

"It's not a haphazard approach," Zuniga said. "We're going block to block, house to house, room to room in some cases."

Still unclear Monday was the scope of the recovery job as officials at all levels have suggested than an initial call for 25,000 body bags was overblown. Melissa Walker, a spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Hospitals, the state agency leading body recovery, said she did not know whether a complete survey of ravaged parishes had been undertaken.

"I have not heard that there is a need for more (recovery) people, but honestly I cannot tell you if there is or not," she said. "I can tell you that they're bringing in bodies every day."

Gov. Kathleen Blanco's spokeswoman, Denise Bottcher, said there currently aren't enough people retrieving bodies, which means the dead aren't being taken care of with appropriate "dignity."

Kenyon, an international firm that aided in body recovery after the 2001 terrorist attacks, is on retainer with FEMA to offer support during and after disasters, Zuniga and a Kenyon spokesman, Bill Berry, said.

Berry said his company would not "desert" southeast Louisiana, but he would not say how long Kenyon intended to continue working here or how many workers it would devote.

"We would continue to work as a courtesy because we would definitely not want our services to FEMA to end," he said. "We're going out of our way to not leave them in any kind of (bad) situation if they have other people that they're wanting to bring in."

Bottcher and Melancon said late Monday that the state was negotiating with the company to continue its work under state contract, which would have to be approved by FEMA for federal reimbursement.