Preliminary Summary Report of Hurricane Katrina Deceased Victim Recovery Locations in Louisiana Ezra Boyd Graduate Research Assistant LSU Hurricane Public Health Center [email protected] Note: The information contained in this preliminary report remains subject to future revision. Hurricane Katrina made landfall along the Mississippi-Louisiana state line on Monday, August 28, 2005. The massive storm surge stretched from La Place, La to Pensacola, Fl, inundating an estimated 300 miles of coast. While the levees that protect New Orleans were not overtopped, multiple failures in the federally constructed hurricane protection system led to catastrophic flooding there. 80% percent of Orleans parish and 99% of St. Bernard parish was inundated by water that flowed through breeched floodwalls and eroded earthen levees. This flood necessitated the complete evacuation of New Orleans, left a half-million people homeless, and took the lives of approximately 1,500 Louisiana residents. However, the true loss-of-life of this disaster remains uncertain. One year later, the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals (DHH) reports nearly 130 missing and the New Orleans Fire Department continues to recover the remains of deceased victims from the rubble of destroyed houses. This report summarizes what is currently known about the deceased. Current Report of Deceased and Missing The State Medical Examiner, Dr. Louis Cataldie, has spearheaded DHH’s effort to reunite the living and recover and identify the deceased. Initially, the Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Team (DMORT) and local parish coroners worked in conjunction with the State Medical Examiner’s office. However, on March 1, 2006 DMORT ceased operation and closed their $17 million dollar morgue and identification center less than four months after it was opened. Currently, the DHH Family Assistance Center handles reports of missing persons, while victim identification has returned to the parish coroners. DHH provides the official figures on dead and missing on their “Katrina Missing” website (http://www.dhh.louisiana.gov/offices/page.asp?ID=192&Detail=5248). As of August 2, 2006 this site listed 1,464 deceased victims and notes that the cases of 135 missing have been turned over to law enforcement. Of the confirmed dead, 1,118 victims perished within Louisiana, while 346 victims perished outside of the state of Louisiana. Of the 1,118 in state deaths, 875 victims were recovered and examined by the Medical Examiner’s Office. The remaining victims were handled by parish coroners: 20 by Orleans parish coroner and 223 by other parish coroners. On August 1, the cases of 135 people who remain listed as missing were turned over to local law enforcement agencies. At least five persons have been located alive. Recovery Locations Dataset In mid-October, the LSU Hurricane Center (HC) established a collaborative effort with the State Medical Examiner’s office. As part of this collaboration, DHH provided the HC with data on the recovery locations for the deceased victims. While continuously updated, a version of the dataset obtained on April 21, 2006 lists the recovery locations of 872 victims through out the State of Louisiana. This corresponds to 79% of the total number of victims recovered within the State. Of the 872 victims listed in the dataset, 786 have been geocoded. This corresponds to 72% of the victims recovered within the state. The dataset includes the following information: Date of Recovery, Type of Facility, Facility Name, Street Address, Nearest Cross Street, City, State, Zip, Parish, Comments, Transported By, and Scene. Each entry in the dataset describes the recovery of one victim. In some cases, multiple victims are recovered from a location. This current dataset is based on “Receipts of Remains” provided to DHH by DMORT and it replaces an early dataset provided by Kenyon International Emergency Services that has been deemed “corrupt” by the State Medical Examiner’s office. The dataset indicates that most victims were recovered from Orleans parish and most victims were recovered from residences. Of the 850 recoveries for which a parish is listed, 580 list Orleans parish, followed by 108 in St. Bernard parish. 51 victims were recovered from East Baton Rouge parish and 26 from Jefferson parish. The dataset lists a structure type for 857 victims. Of these, 414 were recovered from residences, 159 from hospitals and other health care facilities, 62 from nursing homes, 57 from street locations, 19 from the Convention Center, and 8 from the Superdome. The following tables summarize the recovery locations dataset and are based solely on the information provided in the dataset, while the appendix provides various maps depicting recovery locations and aggregate results. Tables 1 & 2: Total number of victims recovered per City and per Parish as listed on the dataset. City Total Parish Total ALEXANDRIA 2 ASCENSION 3 ARABI 15 EAST BATON BASTROP 2 ROUGE 51 BATON EAST ROUGE 52 FELICIANA 1 CHALMETTE 41 IBERVILLE 1 CLINTON 1 JEFFERSON 26 GONZALES 3 LAFAYETTE 12 HARVEY 9 MOREHOUSE 2 HOUMA 9 ORLEANS 580 KENNER 15 RAPIDES 2 LAFAYETTE 12 ST JAMES 1 LUTCHER 1 ST LANDRY 1 MERAUX 9 ST. BERNARD 108 METAIRIE 2 TERREBONNE 9 NEW UNKNOWN 53 ORLEANS 573 Grand Total 850 OPELOUSAS 1 PLAQUEMINE 1 SAINT BERNARD 32 UNKNOWN 53 VIOLET 17 Grand Total 850 Table 3: Total number of victims recovered per structure type as listed on the dataset. Structure Type Total AIRPORT (*) 15 BUSINESS 5 CANAL 2 CHURCH 3 CONVENTION CENTER 19 CORONER OFFICE 32 EOC 6 FUNERAL HOME 11 HEALTH CARE 3 HOSPICE 8 HOSPITAL 139 HOSPITAL 2 HOSPITALIERE 3 LAKE 1 MEDICAL CENTER 4 MORGUE 2 NURSING HOME 62 PARKING GARAGE 1 PARKING LOT 2 RESIDENCE 414 SCHOOL 5 SHERIFFS OFFICE 1 STREET 57 SUPERDOME 8 TEMP MEDICAL CLINIC 1 UNKNOWN 51 Grand Total 857 * The Louis Armstrong International Airport on the Western Edge of Greater New Orleans served as a field hospital and shelter during the post-storm emergency evacuation. As noted, 786 of the recovery locations have been geocoded. The tables below were derived by merging the recovery locations shapefiles with other shapefiles. Parish shapefiles was obtained from the LA GIS Data CD, while the Greater New Orleans Data Center provided a Orleans Parish Neighborhood shapefile. Note that there are minor discrepancies with the above table for recovers per parish. Table 4: Victims recovered per parish as determined by overlaying the geocoded recovery locations with Census Tiger shapefile. Parish Total Orleans 566 St. Bernard 111 East Baton Rouge 51 Jefferson 25 Lafayette 12 Terrebonne 9 Ascension 3 Morehouse 2 Rapides 2 East Feliciana 1 Iberville 1 Livingston 1 St. James 1 St. Landry 1 Grand Total 786 The New Orleans Community Data Center provided shapefiles for planning districts and neighborhoods. The two tables below only apply to Orleans parish. Table 5: Total number of victims recovered per planning district as determined by overlaying the geocoded recovery locations with planning district shapefile. Total Planning District Recovered Algiers 3 Central City/Garden District 76 English Turn 0 French Quarter/CBD 15 Gentilly 82 Lakeview 32 Lower Ninth Ward/Holy Cross 77 Marigny, Bywater, St. Claude, St. 45 Mid-City 77 New Orleans East 74 New Orleans East Area 13 Uptown/Carrollton 70 Village de L'Est Area 2 Grand Total 566 Table 6: Total number of victims recovered per neighborhood as determined by overlaying the geocoded recovery locations with neighborhood shapefile. Total Total Neighborhood Recovered Neighborhood Recovered Lower Ninth Ward Neighborhood 72 Dixon 3 Freret 43 French Quarter 3 Mid-City Neighborhood 27 East Carrollton 2 Touro 26 East Riverside 2 West Lake Forest 26 Florida Development 2 Little Woods 23 Gert Town 2 Milneburg 23 Iberville Development 2 Central City Neighborhood 21 Marlyville/Fountainebleau 2 Lower Garden District Neighborhood 20 Navarre 2 Lakeview Neighborhood 18 Village de l'est 2 Seventh Ward 16 West Riverside 2 Fillmore 14 Audubon 1 Tulane/Gravier 14 B.W. Cooper 1 St. Anthony 13 Black Pearl 1 St. Roch 13 City Park 1 Central Business District 12 Fischer Project 1 St. Claude 12 Irish Channel 1 Viavant/Venetian Isles 12 Lake Catherine 1 Read Blvd East 10 Lakeshore/Lake Vista 1 West End 10 Leonidas 1 Dillard 9 Marigny 1 Florida Area 9 Old Aurora 1 Hollygrove 9 St. Bernard Area 1 Pontchartrain Park 9 St. Thomas Development 1 Gentilly Terrace 8 Whitney 1 Broadmoor 6 Algiers Point 0 Fairgrounds 6 Behrman 0 Gentilly Woods 6 Desire Development 0 Plum Orchard 6 Garden District 0 Holy Cross 5 Lake Terrace & Oaks 0 Milan 5 Lakewood 0 Read Blvd West 5 McDonough 0 Treme'/Lafitte 5 New Aurora/English Turn 0 Bywater Neighborhood 4 Tall Timbers/Brechtel 0 U.S. Naval Base Desire Area 4 Neighborhood 0 Pines Village 4 Uptown Neighborhood 0 Bayou St. John 3 Grand Total 566 Causes and Circumstances Unfortunately, very little can presently be said about the causes and circumstances of those who died during Hurricane Katrina. Operationally, DHH utilizes a broad definition of deceased individuals for whom they provided identification and other services: anyone from the affected parishes that died between August 28 and October 1 for which the cause of death is obviously not Katrina related. Only in a handful of cases, mostly those related to legal concerns, have autopsies been completed, and these results have not yet been made public. In very rough terms, it appears that approximately one third of the fatalities were due to direct exposure with flood waters. Overlaying the recovery locations with a flood depth raster layer shows that approximately 590 victims were recovered from locations that flooded. However, approximately 90 of these victims were recovered from hospitals, multistory apartment buildings, or the second story of homes. For most of these victims, the death did not result from exposure to flood waters.