In the Wake of Hurricane Ike, Residents Forced to Rebury the Dead

When Hurricane Ike hit the Gulf Coast last month, the storm surge that came with it swept hundreds of caskets out of their graves, sending some floating miles out into the marsh. The 13-foot storm surge ripped through cemeteries in southwest Louisiana and coastal Texas.  Officials estimate that some 200 caskets were unearthed.  And, this isn’t the first time such a thing has happened: Hurricane Rita did the same thing three years ago.

From MSNBC:

Officials in coastal areas have long struggled with interring the dead, as caskets buried in low-lying areas are susceptible to being belched up by floodwaters. Some areas — most notably New Orleans — house the dead in above-ground crypts to keep them from drifting away in storms.

Of the caskets ejected by Rita in September 2005, 335 were found and reburied, he said. Eighteen were never found.

“Our mother came out for Rita, and now she came out for Ike,” said Debra Dyson, a commercial fisher whose house in Cameron was destroyed by Ike.

Dyson said coffins holding her brother-in-law and cousin also were heaved out by Rita. Ike was worse — the storm thrust out caskets containing her mother, brother-in-law, cousin, niece, three uncles and two aunts.

The one containing Dyson’s mother floated to the same spot it came to rest after Rita, 22 miles from the cemetery. Only this time, it didn’t take nine months to find it.

This sucks, but it calls to mind the fact that, if we used green burial practices, there would be no coffins to pop up.  Our bodies would simply return to the earth – though, we must admit that some bones would probably be washed out, which could cause an even more gruesome scene than coffins strewn about.

Still, stories like this make us realize how many coffins and caskets there are buried just beneath the surface of the earth, and what a waste it is.  The materials used to make them, the land used to serve as their final resting place. It’s so unnatural, yet we’re still too squeamish about the dead to allow the natural cycle of life and death to carry itself out unimpeded.  One of these days, though, with the population growing as fast as it is, we’re going to run out of land for the living.

Link [MSNBC] + [Green Burial Council]

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