The Black Voice, out of San Bernardino, California, is part of a coalition effort to send 10 volunteers to New Orleans to recover bodies. The effort is also being co-sponsored by entertainer Nancy Wilson and her husband, the Reverend Wiley Burton.
Mark McKay of McKay’s Family Mortuary said the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) sent out a call for morticians across the country to send supplies, but excluded many black mortuaries. McKay and others fear that black morticians will not be allowed to participate in the recovery and burial of bodies, many of which are African American victims. McKay believes it is important to bring dignity to the process and honor the dead.
In fact, Kenyon International Emergency Services announced Sept. 7 that it signed a contract with the state of Louisiana to recover bodies. The contract runs from Sept. 12 to Nov. 15 at the rate of $118,980 per day.
Kenyon is a subsidiary of Service Corporation International (SCI), which runs a chain of funeral homes. They have provided services at the World Trade Center site and after the tsunami in Thailand. A longtime supporter of George W. Bush, the Houston-based company operates 1,500 funeral homes throughout North America.
In the past SCI has been accused of unethical practices, including using unlicensed embalmers and dumping bodies to clear space for new graves and additional profits.
The process of preparing the bodies for burial is being handled almost solely by the Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Team, (DMORT) an organization supervised under FEMA. According to Don Kelly, public information officer for DMORT, the organization uses only trained and certified individuals who have been immunized and have not been accepting the services of untrained personnel in the handling of the bodies.
Led by Mark House, a probation officer, licensed mortician and owner of Windthrop Industries, which makes caskets, the team of volunteers was scheduled to leave for New Orleans October 4, after receiving permission from FEMA. His group has ten days to brave the hazards of handling bodies along with bacteria, mold, poisons from refineries, lead dust and airborne asbestos. Like him, many of the volunteers are already employed in law enforcement; two are licensed morticians; and others work in the funeral business.
Stay tuned for further developments on this issue.
I want to know everything about what they find, the obstacles that are thrown in their way and what they can observe about how Kenyon is spending that 7.5 million dollars — I don’t trust those fuckers AT ALL!
Thanks for this — please let us know what you find out!
ditto this for me as well….
Yours is the only reporting on New Orleans that I trust these days. Many thanks for your work on this. It is so very important. This is the thing everybody wants to know the truth about.
I agree with everything brinn and Alice said. It does seem the only qualifications in the bush circle jerk seems to be previous or ongoing corruption, seriously.
Keep us informed or updated as you find out more information.
enable them to send more than 10 volunteers.
I hope they can get through and are not hurt or hampered in their efforts. The more I’ve read of SCI the more sick and sadistic the granting of the contract to them seems, it wasn’t enough to kill the people, now they want to abuse their corpses? It’s one more slap in the face, one more insult, one more outrage.
Yes, they did leave October 4. No word yet on how things are proceeding.
Link to The Black Voice:
http://www.blackvoicenews.com/modules.php?file=article&name=News&op=modload&sid=3574
I spoke with Cheryl Brown. If you would like to contribute to this effort–and no amount of dinero will be turned away–you may call her or the McKay Mortuary at the number below.
Did you hear, blk sista, where they disconntinued the search for bodies, despite the fact that there is still much debris in the lower ninth ward, and St. Bernard Parish, that has yet to be searched. Whatever happened to the concept of using dogs to sniff out bodies?
Very suspicious, this development.
I just heard a yet unconfirmed rumor that some bodies were so badly decomposed that they were just simply thrown into the water.
There will be a lot of ‘missing presumed dead’ individuals.
So discouraging–I had this feeling all along- that ‘those’people don’t matter. Although,I think,many many will not be found or accounted for.
Let us thank whoever we want to thank for all the good work that is being done.Including Brinnainne,who has worked her butt off to help.
I am not playing Pollyanna here,this disaster will be on the conscience of this country for decades.
But my heart carries little hope for NO.
I don’t think it will recover,not realistically.That is not to say that it CAN’T,but that it will be blocked somehow.
The awesome strength of the NO population,displaced,but determined to return to their homes is a hopeful note,but MY GAAWD- what is it they are returning to?
I cannot even imagine- what it is like.From the reports I have read- it looks like a wasteland.Although someone I read said that many of the houses have cypress beams and so the frames at least can be restored.
OMG