ST. GABRIEL, La. — The dead recovered from New Orleans' slimy,
contaminated floodwaters will be brought to this sleepy town where
medical teams will attempt to identify potentially thousands of bodies.
The morgue will be located in a warehouse next the town's City Hall,
Head Start and senior citizen center, a fact that doesn't sit well with
many locals.
"It would be different in Baton Rouge. This has place has two, three
streets," said Jackie Wilson. "I hope it doesn't start stinking around
here."
Wilson, like many others in this town, had family and friends made
homeless by Hurricane Katrina's flooding of New Orleans.
Residents were concerned about the uptick in traffic, the closing of the
roads into town as a precaution to keep sightseers away and the
possibility that the bodies arriving from New Orleans might carry
diseases.
The police chief, Kevin Ambeau, said he had been assured that the
morgue's existence posed no danger to residents. City Hall's activities
will be moved to nearby locations.
On Monday, the Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Team -- the agency
responsible for the grisly task of dealing with the dead -- plans to
open the morgue to the media and give the world an inside view into what
will become ground zero for tens of thousands of relatives and friends
who lost loved ones.
A stream of dump trucks, 18-wheelers and other vehicles have been
hurling down the town's narrow streets since Wednesday, residents said.
Darlene Brown, who lives across the street from the morgue, said she has
seen trucks bearing large generators, gravel and pipes pass by.
"So what if I'm going to be inconvenienced for a while," Brown said as
she sat under her carport watching all the activity Sunday afternoon.
"It's nothing like those people (New Orleanians) are going through."
The morgue's presence will not be the first undesirable government
facility to be located in the rural poor area along the Mississippi
River: There are two prisons and a center to house lepers.
"Put it this way: Would they put it in a rich?" said Fenolia Green, an
88-year-old retiree housing two nieces and nephews made homeless by
Katrina. "They always dump on the poor."
