Wet Bank Guide

Saturday, September 10, 2005

Lee reports on deaths in Jefferson

Friday, 10:05 p.m.

Sheriff Harry Lee said Saturday night that the Jefferson Parish Coroner’s office had processed 152 bodies, but only 20 of those were deaths related to Hurricane Katrina. He said the coroner’s office was picking up bodies that are reported lying in the street and handling them to FEMA’s specifications. He also said that body count does not include bodies that may have been taken to the morgue in St. Gabriel.

The T-P/NOLA.com reports these dead will be counted:

Although body-recovery operations were still under way, the death toll represents the number of bodies that have been counted where the deaths were a result of Katrina’s winds, rains or floodwaters, or those who died as a result of medical equipment that became inoperable during the hurricane.

These victims will be Officialy Dead, but I would offer this: if your body is lying in a flooded or demolished home, or out on the public street, in what sense would you not have died as a result of the storm?

If you perished in the Chalmette Slip or the New Orleans Convention Center, or shortly after your evacuation days late from these locations, in what sense would you not have died as a result of the storm?

If you were shot by an armed person rioting in the street because of lawlessness, in what sense would you note have died as a result of the storm? If you were shot by the police or National Guard while trying to find food or water or medice for yourself or your family, in what sense would you not have died as a result of the storm?

If you were among those who died in St. Rita's or Bethany nursing homes (the latter when my father spent all but his very last days), and you were were abandoned by the staff to your fate as the waters rose? In what sense would you not have died as a result of the storm?

If you were elderly and trapped in your home (and we will find so many were the elderly and the week) and your suffered a heart attack or a fatal stroke or other medical malady because of the stres you were under, in what sense would you not have died as a result of the storm?

This is not much different than arguing that the death camp victims died of poisoning by Zyklon gas and not of hate. Or trying to pretend they did not die at all.

Are we reduced to a government of delusional holocaust deniers? Is that what we've come to?

Perhaps we should divide in dead into two groups:

Killed by Katrina.

Killed by FEMA and Homeland Security