Mobile UPI  |   About UPI  |   UPI en Español  |   UPI Arabic  |   UPIU  |   My Account
Search:
Go

Some of New Orleans' dead trapped in bed

|
|
 
  
Published: Sept. 17, 2005 at 6:01 PM

NEW ORLEANS, Sept. 17 (UPI) -- The search for New Orleans' dead continues with emergency workers finding the bodies of people trapped in their beds as flood waters surged.

In several neighborhoods, water rose suddenly to a depth of up to 12 feet when the London Avenue Canal was breached several days after Hurricane Katrina hit the city.

"Parts of the city have become a target-rich environment for human remains," Charles Hood of the Federal Emergency Management Agency told the New Orleans Times-Picayune. "We're just now getting into the areas that experienced the most rapid inundation."

As of Friday night, the official death toll for the city stood at 579. The total for the storm was more than 800 with most of the deaths in Louisiana and Mississippi.

Katrina continues to kill days later. The Centers for Disease Control has reported 22 cases of Vibrio infection, with five deaths, in Louisiana and Mississippi.

Other casualties are likely to include sick evacuees separated from their medication, and elderly nursing home patients confused by being in unfamiliar surroundings.

Katrina's final toll is unlikely to be known for months.

Topics: Hurricane Katrina
© 2005 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Any reproduction, republication, redistribution and/or modification of any UPI content is expressly prohibited without UPI's prior written consent.

Order reprints
  
Join the conversation
Most Popular Collections
Notable deaths of 2012 Scripps National Spelling Bee AmfAR Cinema Against AIDS gala
Indianapolis 500 Presidential Medal of Freedom Memorial Day around the nation
Additional Top News Stories
1 of 20
Singer Janelle Monae arrives at the 2012 MTV Movie Awards in Universal City, California
View Caption
Singer Janelle Monae arrives for the MTV Movie Awards at the Gibson Amphitheatre in Universal City, California. UPI/Jim Ruymen
fark
"Good News" clubs teach children in public schools the Biblical importance of killing all nonbelievers...
Five arrested in prostitution sting. Article lists their names, ages and distance from a church
Photoshop this power tower technician
Driving drunk and unlicensed, with a kid not even buckled let alone in a safety seat, en route to...
Man killed in Spencer fire. The lava lamps must have ignited the blacklight posters
Passenger jet crashes into apartment building in Nigerian capitol. Over 150 princes, bank officials,...