Fill out this form to email this article to a friend

Your name		Your email
Recipient email	You may enter up to 20 multiple email addresses, separated by commas.
Your message
Validation Code	Hear validation code
	Enter validation code

We were unable to send your email.

Click here to try again.

Years later, Katrina victims are buried

By Rebecca Catalanello, Times Staff Writer
In print: Saturday, August 30, 2008

Story Tools E-mail this story Contact the editor Print this story Comment on this story Social Bookmarking Digg Facebook Stumbleupon Reddit Del.icio.us Newsvine

ADVERTISEMENT

NEW ORLEANS — There was a scraping sound when they slid it into the crypt.

The shiny silver casket held the body of a man or a woman, a son or a daughter, someone who didn't survive the floodwaters three years ago, someone nobody claimed.

In a somber morning ceremony Friday on the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans laid its final victim to rest.

Amazing Grace floated from Ken Ferdinand's trumpet and into the thick, hot air of Charity Hospital Cemetery near City Park, while a thousand miles away, Hurricane Gustav threatened to do it all again.

Seven caskets holding seven bodies were interred Friday in black granite-plated crypts, part of the newly erected Katrina Memorial — six mausoleums positioned around a circular concrete platform shaped like a hurricane's eye.

Seventy-four other unknown victims were entombed Thursday.

Just weeks ago, this memorial didn't exist. Years of planning ended in a last-minute scramble to finish the monument before the third anniversary. The concrete eye was poured this week, the sod laid Thursday. Fledgling trees lined a freshly built ridge surrounding the grave site, a scene reminiscent of the ongoing construction and landscaping efforts in neighborhoods across this city.

Those gathered around the mausoleum recited the Lord's Prayer, led by Mayor Ray Nagin: "Forgive us as we forgive those who trespass against us."

Two grave attendants sealed the last crypt with silicone and attached the final granite plate to the monument. As sweat-soaked graveyard worker Luther McMorris polished the stone front with a rag, dignitaries took to a nearby stage.

"Who would think three years after Katrina, nature is knocking on our door again?" said retired Army Lt. Gen. Russel Honore, the hard-charging general who oversaw military relief efforts after the Aug. 29, 2005, storm that skirted New Orleans but breached the levees that were supposed to protect the city. Nearly 1,000 people died in the flooding.

Honore issued a stinging critique of the work that remains here and called on citizens and politicians to act wisely as they prepare for Gustav, expected to be a Category 3 storm when it makes landfall next week, with winds up to 130 mph.

When the clock struck 9:38 a.m. — the minute the first levee breached —- Honore joined the mayor and a congressman, ringing three silver bells.

"We ring these bells in remembrance of everyone who passed as it relates to Hurricane Katrina," Nagin said, as the 100 or so gathered jingled their own. "For all the suffering that happened and is happening … for all the survivors who continue to struggle and continue to persevere … for God's blessing on New Orleans and the Gulf Coast and every area of this country and the world that is threatened by a hurricane.

"We ring these bells."

As the memorial service ended, journalists surrounded Nagin. The city, he told them, could be prepared to start evacuating as early as today.