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On
Immediately after Hurricane Rita, 75% of Cameron
Parish was under water. Massive debris fields and
drifts piled against the levees or roadways. In
these drifts were all the personal possessions of
the residents of Cameron Parish. The only functional
building remaining in Cameron was the Parish
Courthouse, which ironically was the only standing
structure which remained after Hurricane Audrey in
1957.
About Cameron Parish
Cameron
Parish is the largest of the 64 parishes in
Louisiana. Less than 10,000 people live in this
2,000 square mile area. Most of the parish (about
60%) is below sea level and the 4,000 residents of
lower Cameron (below the intracostal canal) live on
cheniers or high ground.
Geographically the parish is divided into upper and
lower Cameron by the Intracostal Waterway and also
divided into East and West halves by the fifty foot
deep and two hundred foot wide ship channel.
Burial in Cameron Parish
The
predominant form of burial in Cameron Parish is a
surface vault. These concrete vaults weigh 1,600
pounds and are in two sections: a bottom piece which
is buried twenty-two inches in the ground and a lid
of ten inches which is above the ground level. The
lid fits over a 4-6 inch lip and is most often
secured with mortar or cement.
Typical Days for the Re-Interment
Team
A typical
work day for the SI team was sunrise to sunset,
initially 7 and then 5 days a week. The team
cleaned up all 38 of the disturbed cemeteries and
examined all the grave sites. Most of the
tombstones were fine and just needed to be reset.
The covers for many of the surface vaults had blown
off and just needed to be reset on the exposed
base. About 30% (approximately 350) of the graves
were completely destroyed. The bodies needed to be
found and the graves totally replaced. SI Funeral
Services crews also helped retrieve bodies and put
them in refrigerated 18-wheelers for shipping to
Carville, Louisiana for identification. Once the
remains were cleaned and hopefully identified, they
were placed in a new casket and held for
re-interment.
If the
grave was disturbed, Hixson or Johnson funeral
directors contacted the family of the deceased to
decide on the form of re-interment. Once the
re-interment began, fifteen 18-wheelers full of
bodies in new caskets were brought to Cameron. When
the grave was ready for the casket to be
re-interred, the funeral home arranged for the
family to be present. The funeral home brought the
individual caskets to the cemeteries in hearses and
the funeral directors and SI team re-interred the
body. Often there was a prayer or brief ceremony.
Approximately 315 new surface vaults and 15 new
Wilbert burial vaults were used in the re-interment.
The people
involved in the re-interment process were a very
tangible asset to the success of this operation.
Many of them worked
seven days a week, ten to twelve hours a day,
laboring in the marsh and waterways using marsh
buggies (large tank like barges with tracks and
draglines attached), helicopters, boats from several
sheriff departments, air boats and any other
equipment they could beg or borrow to recover the
caskets. |
