Try to catch Aaron Brown’s show. At the beginning, an Anderson Cooper report is featured, showing photos of corpses — many of them mutilated — found in the convention center. I did a search and this is the only matching story I could find at Google news:
So far, National Guard troops have reported finding at least 40 mutilated bodies at the city’s convention centre which was used as a refugee centre. Arkansas guardsman Mikel Brooks told the New Orleans Times Picayune many of the dead were elderly, or showed signs of trauma. “There’s another one in the freezer, a seven-year-old with her throat cut,” he said. …
“Retreating waters reveal Katrina’s horrors — Seniors die in beds; troops find beaten bodies in convention centre’s freezer,” Canada.com, The Ottawa Citizen; with files from Halifax Daily News and The Associated Press
See also: A NOLA op-ed, “Medical myths debunked” (“Dead bodies on the streets and in the water are an etiologic agent for severe psychological trauma, not contagious diseases.” … “I heard a state health official discuss concerns about cholera and other enteric diseases. Cholera is a pathogen that is rare in our environment. It requires human consumption of food or water contaminated with a causative pathogen which is not even established in our wetlands. Cholera and typhoid are not infections we will face in the upcoming weeks and months.”) I hope this physician is correct. I recall that, after the tsunami, medical experts implored people not to worry about the corpses giving them diseases.
That’s today, Susan? Damn, I wish I had cable.
That’s GREAT!! Maybe that ol’ worm has finally turned!
Ack.. that sounds LOUSY. I meant great that they are showing the truth not that they are showing atrocities, mind š
OH… I think that Physician is wrong. Dead bodies in the water cannot be good…. Stagnant water.. rotting corpses, flies, etc That just cannot be good. Even if that were a muth i would think it would still be a good idea to remove them asap.
Read it all. He was trying to debunk some of the myths/rumors going around — like the corpses as breeding grounds for mosquitos. Sure, flies go for dead bodies, poop, etc.
I just did. The bit about “following the fly swarms” really grabs.
Arf. I hope that those Nat’l Guard soldiers are trained to deal with this — for someone without any prior exposure, it would be very brutal.
CNN’s wrap up on the disaster was focusing on the mistakes of local officials. They panned over school buses (the Republican’s favorite image these days) while the Governor was saying she wished there were buses. Those buses needed drivers, they had all evacuated. Bus companies and trains shut down on Sunday and staff evacuated. The buses needed a destination, a shelter with food, water and medicine, with beds and clothes. Where were those rickety looking school buses to go? 350 miles to the Houston Astrodome? There’s no confirmation that the astrodome was ready for surviors that early.
I thought it was a cheap shot at Governor Blanco and Mayor Nagin. Rachel Madow and Atrios were discussing the press’ “return to hackery” on Air America. CNN is returning.
Just a point on the mutilation of the corpses: as corpses decya, the skin splits open along the lines where skin changes grain as the bodies bloat. To a layperson, it can look like knife wounds. I don’t think they have had a medical examiner or anything confirm mutilation yet.
http://www.wiseass.org/files/katrina1.swf
in memory of
40 of them? OMG
Anderson Cooper is doing a special feature on his Friday show about the conditions at the convention center (I just confused myself with the time zones…umm…7pm ET).
I thought there had already been news stories about “cholera-related” diseases appearing in evacuees. Regardless, there’s so much crap and chemicals in that water, not to mention e-coli, that I really don’t care about what’s not in it. Just get those people out, drain the city and clean it up.
4PM PT. Catnip, we must remember to watch that.
Anderson Cooper looks so grim. Like he’s aged 10 years. And it’s not the lack of sleep, etc. He has been dramatically affected. He will need PTSD counseling. Seriously.
I’ve always thought he was such a lovely man. And I’ll never forget a night, early on in his career at CNN — I think he was subbing for Aaron Brown, and he talked about the end of the line for the Ford car — oh god — I can’t think which model it was.
And he talked about how his mom had had that car when he was growing up. And then he turned to his mom, who was at the anchor table with him and they reminisced about the car. And I nearly fell off my chair when it dawned on me — he hadn’t introduced her by anything but “my mom” — that it was Gloria Vanderbilt.
Gloria Vanderbilt? I didn’t know that. Wow.
That man has a good heart. There’s no doubt about that. I agree that he’s going to need some serious counselling after all that he’s seen and dealt with. You can tell he’s felt it to the core. I think he’s still in shock – just putting one foot in front of the other every day – just like everyone else there. That’s what I did after the incidents that caused my PTSD. I worked damn hard and tried to keep moving. 6 months later I collapsed into an incredible depression, ended up hospitalized for 2 months and it was all uphill from there. I just hope he’s all right.
John Edwards is on Aaron’s show now. Go John!
Didn’t Fema ban or ask the media not to run images of dead bodies?
I guess CNN didn’t get that memo.
that blames it on the locals.
Me, I observe that the Mayor lost his entire city and the govs lost the equivalent of The United Kingdom. Bush had 47 completely intact states at his disposal. He must know–spent the storm visiting several of them.
See my story below. FEMA did not ban the images … just discouraged them.
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NEW ORLEANS Sept. 8, 2005 — Marty Bahamonde, a FEMA spokesman, said the agency has hired a contractor to help remove bodies in the expectation that there may be large numbers of corpses.
“Nobody has any numbers or anything they’re going by other than guesswork,” Bahamonde said.
The enormity of the disaster came ever-clearer in neighboring St. Bernard Parish, which was hit by a levee break that brought a wall of water up to 20 feet high. State Rep. Nita Hutter said 30 people died at a flooded nursing home in Chalmette when the staff left the elderly residents behind in their beds. And Rep. Charlie Melancon said more than 100 people died at a dockside warehouse while they waited for rescuers to ferry them to safety.
[…]
25,000 Extra Body Bags are Flown In
Meanwhile, the firm of Kenyon Worldwide Disaster Management has been hired by FEMA to coordinate the recovery of bodies in Orleans, Jefferson, St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes.
Images of the dead Stern.de
RIP
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Our WMD man, who wouldn’t resign nor could he get fired by GWB.
He knew the level of competence of this administration, what is he moaning about, has he visited the poor and destitute in NOLA?
WASHINGTON (AFP) Sept. 8, 2005 — Former US Secretary of State Colin Powell had tough words for federal, state and local authorities on their response to Hurricane Katrina in a television interview to air Friday.
“I think there have been a lot of failures at a lot of levels — local, state and federal,” Powell said in an interview with the ABC News program “20/20,” to air late Friday. “There was more than enough warning over time about the dangers to New Orleans. Not enough was done. I don’t think advantage was taken of the time that was available to us, and I just don’t know why.”
Powell was asked if the slipshod government response to the disaster was due to racism, since the overwhelming majority of the victims are poor African-Americans.
“I don’t think its racism, I think its economic,” Powell said. “When you look at those who werent able to get out, it should have been a blinding flash of the obvious to everybody that when you order a mandatory evacuation, you cant expect everybody to evacuate on their own.”
“These are people who dont have credit cards; only one in ten families at that economic level in New Orleans have a car. So it wasn’t a racial thing — but poverty disproportionately affects African-Americans in this country. And it happened because they were poor. ”
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It’s really bad when we have to look to Aarom (another Brownie) Brown and Anderson (the hack) Stooper for news.
You are quire right about the exaggerated dangers of dead bodies.I posted a link on here/EuroTrib or on Kos to a .pdf publication from the WHO about this. The BBC has also had an expert from the London School of Tropical Medicine explaining that many of the infectious agents will be killed off as this water is saline. There could be some risks for those collecting the bodies but these can be avoided by appropriate handling.
The broadcast media (CNN amongst others I have seen) are quoting the risk as coming from E.Coli. That is a nonsense as generally that bacterium is only a mild health hazard and then to people whose immune system is already compromised – remember it is in most people’s digestive systems. What they have picked up is that it has been announced that the levels of E. Coli in the water is high. It is used as an indicator of what the levels of other bacteria might be.
Evidently experts have tested the water and found both a pathogen related to cholera (though not cholera itself) and also high levels of E. coli bacteria, among other stuff. And of course there’s all the oil and gasoline that’s in the water; that can’t be good.
Another fear is hepatitis; rescuers are being vaccinated against all types of hepatitis and also receiving tetanus boosters before they go in.
I have a feeling that it’s going to be several years before a lot of the health problems actually creep up…and then the government will try to weasel out of their responsibility like they did with the Gulf War veterans…