Katrina Coverage

The blurb "Katrina's death toll in La. tops 1,000" has a little more on the first part of the title.

The K-R article "Chaotic coordination had government scrambling for body bags" (also here) describes FEMA's frantic search for more bags, all the while that they had thousands of bags on hand, including a thousand at a state government office in Louisiana. You might not want to read the end of that article or this paragraph: they claim that due to the conditions of some bodies up to three bags were required. As well, they put pets and those disinterred in their own bags.

Of course, that could also result in conspiracy theories being developed.

See also the AP's 9/7 article "25,000 body bags on hand in Louisiana".

An unverified summary of the numbers is here:

2004/05 DOD 25,000 ordered for Iraq/Afg
2004/05 DOD 89,748 ordered for US

8/26/05 NOLA 1,000 onhand in Coroners off.
8/26/05 DOD 100,000 on hand in CA/PA/US
9/xx/01 FEMA 25,000 ordered for MS/LA
9/7/05 FEMA 3,000 on hand MS DMORT
9/7/05 FEMA 8,000 on hand LA DMORT
9/7/05 DOD 17,000 on hand LA DMORT
9/7/05 FEMA/DOD ordered 50,000 status not known
9/xx/05 LA/Kenyon 12,500 ordered in contract with Kenyon
9/xx/05 FEMA 10,000 canceled
10/xx/05 DOD 30,000 ordered not del yet

Costs (25,000 body bags @ $5-50 dollars (SC bags needed 3 per body)
FEMA/MS/LA $250,000 Early Sept 05
LA $25,000 Sept 12 (bought through Kenyon?)

Note: Pets and disinterred bodies also got body bags(Yah, sure)DOD might have sent more to MS.

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