Life Among the Ruins

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But rebuilding New Orleans is still a distant ambition at a time when merely cleaning it up remains a Sisyphean endeavor. The Guardsmen, flying above the city in their Black Hawks to rescue survivors, have seen what residents stranded without electricity could not--the utter devastation out east in St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes, where the Gulf of Mexico has played no favorites, inundating millionaire McMansions and modest homes alike. In the middle of an intersection sits an abandoned wheelchair, water lapping at the handlebars, its occupant carried who knows where by the floodwaters. Cars line another roadway, their doors open as if the drivers thought they could outrun the 20-ft. surges.

In a heavily guarded, nondescript warehouse in St. Gabriel, a team of 150 medical examiners, coroners, forensic pathologists, dentists, radiologists and funeral directors is running an around-the-clock operation to prepare bodies for identification. They are men of few words, like Terry Edwards, 47, a veteran funeral director from Eastland, Texas. Although he has volunteered for 11 disasters' aftermaths, including cleaning up the Columbia shuttle crash, he says New Orleans is the worst. In teams of two, Edwards and his comrades open each body bag, inventory the contents, decontaminate for chemical waste, then assess the victim for gunshot wounds or a shattered skull that might indicate murder, not accidental death. Each victim is photographed, with attention given to such identifiers as long-healed scars, birthmarks and tattoos. Fingerprinting and dental imaging follow before the forensic specialists collect samples of DNA, preferably a sliver of bone. Then the dead are returned to their body bags to be stored in a refrigerated receiving vault until the Federal Emergency Management Agency can get the remains back to Louisiana for the formal process of identification.

Standing in the floodwaters last week, his cowboy boots muddied, New Orleans' coroner was philosophical about the future, talking death one minute, jazz and grilled oysters the next. Minyard claims that his re-election, eight times in a row, is attributable mostly to his trumpet playing at Preservation Hall, where they call him Dr. Jazz. "I'm native born in New Orleans, live in the French Quarter, been here all my life," he says. "We've recovered from the Civil War, from yellow-fever epidemics, from hurricanes--the hurricane of 1915, and the hurricane of 1947 that like to have wiped out the city. Then Betsy in 1965."

Katrina's floodwaters nearly swept him to his death, but he holds out hope in the midst of an awful job: "This will occupy me for probably five years, but I think New Orleans will rise up and be better than before. I can't wait to come back." Minyard pauses, thinking about his office--now under water, his papers ruined--and the lawsuits that will inevitably be filed. Then he smiles and says, "I've needed a new office for a long time. I'm going to con somebody into giving me one." New Orleans will need plenty more of that old, enterprising spirit if it is to recover all it has lost. --With reporting by Steve Barnes/St. Gabriel and Kim Humphreys/St. Bernard Parish