Updated: 03:37 AM EST
Victims of Katrina Tangled in Bureaucracy
By LYNN BREZOSKY, AP
APJulia and Eldo Allen place flowers on the coffin containing the ashes of their son, John David Allen, and daughter-in-law, Susan Allen.
HARLINGEN, Texas (Jan. 21) - After Hurricane Katrina socked the central Gulf Coast, Eldo and Julia Allen watched the news and waited in vain for word from their son in Biloxi, Miss.
They waited for nearly four months, not knowing the horrific truth: that their son and daughter-in-law died as the storm surge swallowed their Beach Boulevard apartment. That their bodies had long since been found and identified at the Harrison County, Miss., coroner's office. And that they were about to be "disposed of" after going so long unclaimed.
The agencies the Allens had been calling all those months hadn't contacted the coroner, and the coroner hadn't checked with the agencies.
"Nobody talked to nobody," Eldo Allen said, his voice wrapped in grief. "That's why we just was almost too late. If we'd been a little later they would have disposed of the bodies with 'next of kin unknown,' and that would have been..."
He bowed his head over a dining room table laden with family photo albums, sympathy cards from the retirement community, and the black box holding his son's ashes, before completing his thought: "That would have been more than I could stand."
Farewell to Two Free Spirits
They were free spirits, John and Susan. John liked to play guitar and write songs, Susan was known for her candor and the way she clapped her hands and exclaimed, "Yeah, baby!" when she was happy. She worked as a school custodian full time, with a part-time gig dealing blackjack at one of the casinos.
Once, when the topic of hurricanes came up, the elder Allens expressed fear that one would devastate the Texas coast. John told his father he should move to Biloxi -- the city's stately old mansions were proof that hurricanes never hit there.
Eldo Allen hasn't been able to find out exactly how long his son's and daughter-in-law's bodies lay in the post-storm debris before they were found, only that it was "a whole lot of days."
He searched the Internet last week and found a New York Times story about the Biloxi devastation, and it mentioned that an apartment building had been hit by a gambling barge in the storm, burying eight people.
In the article, someone points to a foot and then a knee visible in the rubble. "That's J.D.," the person says. "And that's Sue."
No belongings were returned - no wedding rings or other jewelry, not the eagle necklace John always wore.
John was identified through his fingerprints, which matched prints taken decades earlier when he served in the Air Force. Then it was easy to identify Susan.
Susan was estranged from her family in Wisconsin, but the Allens say someone must care. Eldo yearned to tell them that she finally was cared for in death, that "She didn't just get 'disposed of.' That's such a terrible word, 'disposed of."'
On Wednesday, friends joined the Allens as they buried a coffin containing two ash-filled urns: One for John, and one for Susan.
01-21-06 03:09 EST
1 comment:
From Hurricane Rita blogger Ron Franscell at http://underthenews.blogspot.com ...
Some 4,200 people are still missing since Hurricane Katrina. Some are probably not dead, but relocated. Some might have been duplicated by careless clerks. But many are dead and some of them are likely reduced to ashes by the feckless boobs we expect to protect us from storms and other disasters. Many have probably already been dumped in paupers' or mass graves, or worse.
FEMA isn't woefully inefficient because of the laughably inept Michael Brown ... it is a culture of waste and incompetence ... and this is an agency that we expect to help protect our safety, lives and homes. The Red Cross is only marginally better, but only because its workers have humane motivations. And in 131 days, a new hurricane season -- already predicted to be a killer -- starts again ... and we haven't even found all the victims of the last one.
Instead of looking for new handouts from millionaire swindler/lobbyists, and quibbling over whether a Supreme Court nominee's name is prounced "Alito" or "Alioto" ... or writing children's books from the perspective of a dog ... why can't Congress enact laws that prevent the disposal of bodies from the Katrina disaster until all efforts to identify them have been exhausted?
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