Since Sunday, The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has been working with officials in Cameron and Calcasieu parishes recovering caskets and human remains disturbed by Hurriance Ike. Officials estimate that 300-400 caskets were distinerred and scattered by the storm surge, with one casket found 35 miles away from its gravesite.
The Disaster Mortuary Assistance Team (which also includes representatives from FEMA and the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals) currently has 35 members from Arkansas and Louisiana but is expected to expand to 60 and include pathologists, anthropologists, forensic odontologists, X-ray techs, and medical legal investigators. FEMA spokesman Andrew Thomas says the team will work where it's needed in south Louisiana.
In a statement released yesterday, FEMA says the first step is to gather remains. "This includes getting GPS coordinates and gathering any evidence that can help identify the remains: foliage on the casket to match with cemeteries, clothing families may recall as used in the burial, and so forth." Bodies and caskets will be returned to a temporary morgue to be identified by HSS, and then are returned to the local coroners and governments for re-interment.
David Calhoun and Elizabeth “EB” Brooks are the first two employees of Lafayette Central Park Inc., the nonprofit charged with turning Lafayette Consolidated Government’s 100-acre Johnston Street Horse Farm property into a passive public park. Calhoun was named executive director, and Brooks is director of planning and design.
At Thursday's State of the Economy luncheon, LEDA President and CEO Gregg Gothreaux said PXP has already quietly hired 180 people for its Broussard expansion.
There will soon be a whole lot of shakin’ going on at Benny’s Sportshack Supplement Depot, a new concept by Opelousas native Benny Nele. Located at 2002 Johnston St., the supplement shop, smoothie bar and café, featuring hot off the press paninis and wraps, plans to open in late May.
This year’s Cool Town issue is all about people who are not native to South Louisiana but made a conscious decision to be here, to be among us, to participate in our culture and contribute to it.
A shelved ordinance transferring $200,000 from a northside drainage project to a south Lafayette development may not break any laws, but it stinks to high heaven.
An effort to restore a shuttered dancehall and document other vacant or razed honky-tonks could serve as a model for saving an endangered species of entertainment.
Lafayette’s gene pool has been host to a long line of eccentric characters who have blurred the lines between crazy, genius, disturbed and curiously entertaining.
Since Sunday, The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has been working with officials in Cameron and Calcasieu parishes recovering caskets and human remains disturbed by Hurriance Ike. Officials estimate that 300-400 caskets were distinerred and scattered by the storm surge, with one casket found 35 miles away from its gravesite.
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