Apologies up front for topic: Bodies

[Viking]

In the tsunami and on 9/11, we were talking about a small geographic area.

This time, we're talking about a huge area. Victims aren't going to be concentrated into a small area. And, as others are pointing out, many of them are trapped and hidden inside buildings.

Are you kidding??? A small geographic area was hit by the tsunami???
The coastal regions ofIndia, Thailand, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, the Westcoast of Africa, the Seychelles, the Maledives, etc.
When was the last time you watched news or took a look at a world map?
How do you think 300,000 lives were lost

 

[Lisa loves Pooh]

What made me think about this in the first place was seeing a backhoe picking up debris.
First, how do they know WHAT is in that backhoe pile?
Second, WHAT are they going to do with all that debris?

I would guess the locale--the backhoe in question..I think I saw it...was in an industrial part. Also--it may have been searched beforehand.

They will not do anything to homes until they have verified nobody alive and nobody dead.

 

[Deb in IA]

Here's a body for you, phorsenuf . . .

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/

 

[ducklite]

The news reports are saying there are bodies in the water everywhere. Why is it tho that if there are supposably many, how come you don't see them?

The government specifically asked the media not to show bodies out of respect for the families. I did see a couple of items in large angle shots that easily could have been bodies, but weren't readily identifiable as such.

Anne

 

[phorsenuf]

Here's a body for you, phorsenuf . . .

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/

I don't want to see a body, you have misunderstood my question. I was saying that since they can't be seen than perhaps its not as bad. You know, maybe not as many people died as the media would like us to believe. I was trying to be hopeful, not morbid.

BTW.....I didn't follow your link. I really do not want to see one thanks.

 

[Christine]

When I was watching CNN over the weekend, they were quite blatant in their "dead body" coverage. Even then, I only saw 3 dead bodies. Two of them were in a pretty full-up state of rigor mortis. Not pretty and I was quite shocked that they showed it.

 

[Deb in IA]

I don't want to see a body, you have misunderstood my question. I was saying that since they can't be seen than perhaps its not as bad. You know, maybe not as many people died as the media would like us to believe. I was trying to be hopeful, not morbid.

BTW.....I didn't follow your link. I really do not want to see one thanks.

Oh, OK. I understand. Sorry I misunderstood.
And I don't blame you. Having seen plenty of dead bodies, I can tell you they DON'T look like "CSI", and there is special about it.

 

[phorsenuf]

Oh, OK. I understand. Sorry I misunderstood.

No trouble, just wanted to set the record staight so to speak. I have a hard enough time with the ones on CSI! LOL!

 

[Miss Jasmine]

You don't see them because:
1) the media has been asked not to show it;
2)some bodies are in homes and other buildings;
3)you wouldn't recognize it as a body (water and time does some rather icky things to a body); and
4) the bodies are being held down by debris UNDER the water.

I am sure there are many other reasons, but that is what I thought of right away.

 

[Christine]

Okay, so I have a morbid question.

I most of the bodies are underwater and the pumping/draining is going on, will the bodies all be "pulled" into the pumping areas with the water?

 

[Lisa loves Pooh]

They actually showed the processing center on tv--they have stations for DNA, fingerprints and such. The deceased will be documented as much as abled--and they have refrigerated trucks on standby. The storage/burial information after that I do not have. But each person will be viewed and documented as best as possible.

 

[JimMIA]

Okay, okay...I'll give up and answer the question I was trying to avoid.

Several reasons why you don't see bodies that are actually there. One, many of them are undoubtedly inside -- people who could not get out of flooding houses. Two, the news media helicopters are severely limited in the places they can go -- and, believe it or not, they do exercise some sensitivity. They have a lot of film they won't show.

The other reason is that drowning victims do not float. They sink. They remain on the bottom until natural chemical reactions create gases, and then they float to the surface. That is days later, sometimes many days later, depending on the weather and temperature of the water. Also, once they are on the surface, the gases often escape for a variety of reasons I won't go into, and the body sinks again...this time usually for good, depending on what caused the gases to escape. That's about as good an explanation as I'm going to attempt.

There are more bodies there than you will see...hopefully fewer than we fear.

 

[Christine]

Jim,
Will all the bodies be able to be recovered on will they float out into larger bodies of water?

 

[JimMIA]

Jim,
Will all the bodies be able to be recovered on will they float out into larger bodies of water?

I'm probably not the right person to ask that question, but my understanding is that NO is like a soupbowl, and any water leaving is not going to flow out. It will be pumped out. Obviously, they'll have the pumps protected from anything being pulled into them, even if there were no bodies there. A tree branch could trash a million dollar pump.

If the water flows, sure the bodies would flow with it, regardless of where in the water column they are. That was a big problem in the tsunamis, and the main reason why huge numbers of bodies were not found. The tsunami roared in, crested, and then swept back out to sea, taking many bodies with it.

Hurricane storm surges are nothing like tsunamis. We think that, but actually, a hurricane storm surge is just a dome of water pushed in front of the storm. The circulation of the storm exerts downward pressure on the ocean. The ocean acts like a bowl of jello -- push down in one place, it rises up in another place. The harder the push, the higher the rise. [Edit: The storm surge is not moving hundreds of miles per hour like a tsunami; it's moving at the speed of the storm, and it extends way out in front of the storm, so the surge is gradual, unless the topography of the beach makes it break like a wave.]

Because a hurricane takes so many hours to pass by, you don't get the huge rip tide you get with a tsunami. You get water returning to the ocean, but much more gradually.

 

[sgtdisney]

Since we are on a morbid topic like this, I have another question. What about all the bodies that were previously (and currently) in the cemetaries in NO? I have never been to NO, but I heard (and have seen in the movies) that they tend to bury their people above ground in NO, in crypt type things. What will happen to those bodies? Has anyone reported on the conditions of the cemetaries in NO. Those bodies had to have been under water, and if the crypts were washed away, floating around. Sorry for the morbid thought, but since we are on the subject, it was something I was curious about.

 

[Tigger_Magic]

I saw some pictures early on of a number of crypts that were broken open with a few caskets on the ground. The news photos didn't show any of the coffins broken or open. This will undoubtedly be part of the clean-up effort -- to re-entomb the caskets and re-seal the vaults.

 

[froglady]

They actually showed the processing center on tv--they have stations for DNA, fingerprints and such. The deceased will be documented as much as abled--and they have refrigerated trucks on standby. The storage/burial information after that I do not have. But each person will be viewed and documented as best as possible.

Our local news showed a local funeral director who is a member of a nationwide disaster body mangement group, and he is prepared for shipments of bodies, once they've been ID'd. His funeral home also has a crematorium.

I assume that there must be hundreds of funeral directors standing by the same way.

 

[TallyLassie]

My understanding is that many of these people will be hard to identify, especially the children. After days in the water, DNA sometimes isn't even useful, so they must use dental records. Typically, young children have not had a lot of dental work done to identify them.

Thankfully, there has not been many reports of children losing their lives. The three babies that died at the Superdome, have been all that I have heard about.

 

[JimMIA]

After days in the water, DNA sometimes isn't even useful, so they must use dental records.

DNA is present in every cell. Water doesn't change cells. Natural processes will destroy some cells, but not all, so they'll be able to get DNA if they need it. DNA has been recovered from fossils tens of thousands of years old.

Most identification work will start with plain old detective work, investigating where the body was found, age, sex, race, and all of the physical characteristics, plus clothing worn, etc. Some bodies will have ID on them. Some will be found in their own houses, or houses where existing missing persons reports say a body may be.

I think the hierarchy for IDs will be

1. Visual - obviously not possible in every case
2. Fingerprint - requires that the person's fingerprints be on file, and obviously not everyone's are
3. DNA - getting DNA from the body is the easy part. The difficult part is finding the right relatives to compare to, but I suspect they will be taking DNA samples from all relatives seeking loved ones.
4. Dental - Dental is tough, because you have to have several things. First, you have to have pretty darn good idea who the person is. You need to know who their dentist is, and you have to be able to locate them, And finally, the dentist's dental records have to be intact. Dental evidence could be compared with insurance company records if the person was insured, although you'd have to work around some privacy issues.

 

[phorsenuf]

JimMIA, I have to ask, what do you do for a living? You seem very knowledgable on these things so I assume your are in "the business" so to speak?

Thanks for your answers too. I know this is a morbid discussion, but I think they are questions we all wonder about, as gross as that may seem! LOL