About those body bags, can anybody help me with the math?

[preciousdove]

10:39 PM CDT on Wednesday, September 7, 2005
25,000 body bags on hand in Louisiana :shrug:

Modesto company to deliver more body bags to New Orleans
The government's order for another 50,000 will be filled by about eight firms
http://www.modbee.com/local/story/11196514p-11948351c.html
also http://www.wfaa.com/sharedcontent/dws/wfaa/katrina/stories/wfaa050907_mo_holdouts.36225273.html (says needs registration)

Posted on Fri, Oct. 07, 2005
Chaotic coordination had government scrambling for body bags

BY AARON C. DAVIS AND SETH BORENSTEIN
Knight Ridder Newspapers

...The Defense Department had close to 100,000 body bags on hand, including 20,398 freshly purchased ones stored in Pennsylvania and California A thousand more - enough to cover the body count to date in Louisiana - sat stacked up even closer in the New Orleans Parish coroner's office....

In the past two years, the Defense Department had purchased 114,748 body bags, and it sent nearly 25,000 to Iraq and Afghanistan in the past year, according to the Defense Logistics Agency. The Federal Emergency Management Agency had a long-standing arrangement to tap military supplies of body bags from depots in California and Pennsylvania when needed. Eventually, many of those bags were sent to Katrina-hit areas....

Seemingly unaware of the military's stockpiles and at odds with its past practices, FEMA and the states of Louisiana and Mississippi spent nearly $250,000 on body bags in the days after Katrina hit, cleaning out suppliers nationwide. Then they went hunting for more. Overall, they purchased more than 24,000 body bags, with 17,000 amassed in New Orleans at one point.

Before Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, federal officials bought body bags by the thousands, but they didn't get to the storm-hit area until several days after panic had set in.

Mississippi even sent a helicopter to West Columbia, S.C., to airlift 3,000 newly purchased bags. But many of those bags were lightweight and ripped open as emergency workers carried away waterlogged corpses.

Parts of the federal government reduced their body bag purchases last month after street searches revealed that fewer people than expected had died. But on Sept. 12, Louisiana signed a body-recovery contract that included $25,000 for body bags. The state called off its search for victims Tuesday, but it's bound through Nov. 15 by a contract with a Texas firm that's costing it as much as $118,000 a day....

Earlier this month, the Defense Department told its three suppliers that it needed 30,000 new bags to replenish supplies....

FEMA bought 18,000 body bags from Salam International of Laguna Hills, Calif. But after 8,000 were delivered, the federal disaster agency cancelled the final 10,000 bags as they were being loaded into a truck, company President Abdul Salam said.
Many bodies got multiple bags. Pets got body bags. Some already-buried bodies that resurfaced in the flood had to get new bags, too.

http://www.sanluisobispo.com/mld/sanluisobispo/news/nation/12847481.htm

[texpatriot2004]

1. Hmm. Well that would mean the Repubs are doing "Fuzzy Math"

in the Gulf. Of course, I think that the private firms and mercenaries were given the job of collecting the dead so as not to have true numbers revealed. I think that it's in the 1,000's and probably Nagin was right 10,000 (or IMHO more).

So from your post, what's your total body bag count?

[mestup]

2. Definitely Fuzzy Math. The Bush Admin never has to "show its work."

[preciousdove]

3. Here is the breakdown acc to those 3 articles (took a nap);

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.

[texpatriot2004]

7. Thatnks for the list...it's way more than 1,000 eh? nm

[cornermouse]

4. Republicans spending like wild-eyed maniacs.

:mad: And they have the nerve to complain about democratics spending?

[Alamom]

5. 40 days after Katrina Hit..............(15 more found yesterday )

We will never know how many people died due to this hurricane and the incompetence which followed. This should be unacceptable to all Americans.
The incompetence, mismanagemant and cover-up which continues 40 days later is almost unbelievable, but it exists.

I really don't want to know the true number of the dead.
I already know the suffering and horror of this catastrophe is more than my mind can comprehend.

I feel for the many people who will never know what happened to a family member, friend, neighbor......
I feel for those who may be gone and do not have anyone to check on them or even wonder what happened to them.
I feel for those who did survive and will never have closure as they will always think someone they loved, cared for, were friends with, may still be alive and relocated or may have died and their life will not be counted.

Every person deserves to be counted, in life and death.
I don't know the answer. I know it is not excuses for bad management, bad planning or bad communication.
If it is allowed this time, it will be allowed again.



LA Times
10/08/05
A LONG ROAD TO RECOVERY
Irony of Body-Recovery Woes: There Was a Plan
Conflicting orders and confusion hampered an effort that officials and others had prepared for.

By Josh Meyer, Times Staff Writer

There was just one problem: When the storm struck, it turned out that no one could agree on who should perform the most basic task of all — collecting the bodies.

As a result, while police and others recovered some bodies, the organizations that were officially responsible for doing so did not collect the remains of any storm victims for a full week after Katrina and its floodwaters hit the city. Even after the collection process got underway, scores of bodies lay unattended for weeks.

Even now, the failure to recover the dead in a timely way stirs bitterness. On Thursday, New Orleans coroner Frank Minyard called a news conference to complain that the Federal Emergency Management Agency was not pushing hard to identify victims. He said he was deluged with anguished appeals from families unable to get the bodies of relatives released from the temporary federal morgue in St. Gabriel, La. The poor condition of many bodies, the result of their delayed recovery, is complicating the identification process.

On Friday, 15 more bodies were collected, bringing the Louisiana death toll to 1,003.


http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-collect8oct08,0,4978861.story?coll=la-home-nation

[DoYouEverWonder]

6. BushCo was hoping for an outbreak of infectious diseases

which fortunately didn't come to fruition.

If the DOD had kept control of NO, in a few more days it would have become necessary to 'quarantine' the Superdome. Within a month NO would have looked like Fallujah. That was why they needed so many bags.