NEW ORLEANS, Sept. 8 (UPI) -- In a grim reminder of what is yet to come, authorities removed 30 bodies from a flooded suburban New Orleans nursing home.
The discovery at St. Rita's Nursing Home in lower St. Bernard Parish came as 25,000 body bags arrived at the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals, CNN said Thursday.
Early Thursday, the official death toll from Hurricane Katrina stood at 294, but that number was expected to rise dramatically.
Mortuary teams with refrigerated trucks arrived at the nursing home to deal with the dead. About 50 others were rescued.
The parish is east of New Orleans, where between 10,000 and 15,000 people are believed to remain in the flooded city, and thousands are feared dead.
Deputies reported that floodwaters had reached a height of eight feet in some parts of St. Bernard.
