Study tries to identify uncounted storm victims
By Coleman Warner
Staff writer
One lived in Gentilly, the other in St. Bernard Parish, but
their
lives proceeded in many way on parallel tracks.
Both Yvonne Aubry and Sam Cerniglia lived long and
prosperously,
both still in homes they owned, still independent, still
married to
their longtime spouses, both retired from accomplished
lives, she as
a 30-year New Orleans public school teacher, he as a
Charity
Hospital maintenance engineer who treasured a Purple Heart
he’d won
in World War II.
Both saw the all the trappings earned over a lifetime
obliterated in
a single August day last year, along with their communities.
And then life became a slow slide to death, the relatives of
both
said, as they succumbed to medical conditions both had
managed
before the storm.
“She couldn’t believe that the house was destroyed, that the
water
came in and took everything that they had,” said Aubry’s
daughter,
Yvonne Clark.
Did Hurricane Katrina kill them? Neither of their names can
be found
on the official state list of flood-related deaths. And yet their
stories hold particular interest for Columbia University
professor
John Mutter, who is gearing up an inquiry about far-flung
Katrina
victims. He relies on Internet searches and public feedback.
He
vows an almost indefinite committment to recording their
deaths
and, when possible, the details of their lives.
“The sad thing about these events, not just in our country
but all
over the world, is people have short memories of these
things.
There’s a weariness in hearing about it,” Mutter said. “They
get
tired and they say ‘What’s the point with continuing on with
the
funding of these (identification efforts)?’ ”
Mutter said that, based on preliminary findings, he believes
hundreds of people could be legitimately added to Katrina’s
death
toll. State officials have vowed to work with him to improve
Katrina-death identification work for which federal financing
has
run short.
The New York environmental sciences professor and a
research
associate, Amatulla R’id, are using published stories and
obituaries, Internet searches and, beginning this week, a
Web site
appeal, to develop leads or information about people who
did, or
may have, died as a result of Katrina. That includes people
who
succumbed to health problems, or committed suicide, long
after the
storm, or hundreds of miles away from the disaster zone.
As deputy director of Columbia’s Earth Institute in New York,
Mutter
studies the “demography of vulnerability” in connection with
people
killed by natural disasters around the globe, and he is
troubled by
persistent gaps in data available about Katrina’s victims.
“I keep thinking that somebody else must be doing this, but
I keep
finding out that nobody else is,” said Mutter, 58, who hasn’t
visited the New Orleans area since Katrina. “The scale of the
tragedy is measured in the death toll ... It’s very important
to
get as accurately as possible what the real number was.”
It also is essential to learn more about victims already
identified
by government officials, who comprise the bulk of an official
count
of nearly 1,700 in Louisiana and Mississippi, Mutter says.
The Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals has
documented the
deaths of 1,464 people in or from southeast Louisiana as a
result
of the storm, and prior to Oct. 1. The agency also has a
released a
list of 828 victim names, drawn from bodies examined at
federally-funded morgues set up after Katrina.
The ramping up of the Columbia project comes amid
frustration on the
part of some state officials that federal financial support for
a
finer accounting of those killed by Katrina has tapered off.
The
Find Family National Call Center shut down weeks ago, and
bureaucrats in Baton Rouge have shipped DNA samples off
to a north
Louisiana crime lab.
Ezra Boyd, a researcher at the Louisiana State University
Hurricane
Center who is studying the geographic distribution of
Katrina’s
storm victims, said the work of the Columbia researchers
probes a
vital “grey area” of storm effects that so far has received
little
attention.
“Take a million people, take away their homes” and
temporarily
disperse them, and all manner of fatal effect can be
expected in
the aftermath, he said. “I think a few hundred (unrecorded
deaths)
is possible.” Beyond the basics of age, race and gender, the
researchers are asking relatives and friends to add
information
about marital status, location of death, dates of death and
birth,
employment, housing (renter or homeowner) at the time of
the storm,
and car ownership. Those responding also are asked their
opinion
about whether the victim died as a direct or indirect result of
Katrina.
The name and a phone number for those offering
information is
requested, but Mutter said he tries to avoid calling
immediate
family members, hoping not to cause them any emotional
grief.
Louisiana’s state medical examiner, Dr. Louis Cataldie, said
the
Columbia effort seems well crafted and that he will talk with
Mutter to establish a link between the project and Louisiana
agencies.
But Cataldie noted that other Web sites gathering
information about
Katrina victims have come and gone, and he wondered if the
Columbia
effort will be short-lived.
Mutter said he believes that within six months the flow of
useful
data will taper off. But he has no plans for shutting down the
Web
site and said his search for more information about victims
will
continue “essentially indefinitely.”
Information is collected through the Earth Institute’s Web
site and,
after screening, it is posted on the site for public viewing.
So far the researchers have assembled and posted
information, with
various levels of descriptive detail, on nearly 1,200 people.
Some of the posted details are surprisingly personal. The
first
victim listed, for example, 64-year-old Wayne Aaslestad, a
Lake
Catherine resident — also included in the state’s official list
of
victims — is described on the Columbia Web site as “poor”
under a
social-status column, and, citing Web blogs and other
sources, it
adds:
“From South Louisiana; grew up on St. Roch Avenue in
Gentilly; sold
his parents’ house in 1995; lived most of his life at his camp
out
on Highway 90, Chef Menteur Highway. His home rested
atop pilings
over Lake St. Catherine amidst an assortment of odd
vehicles,
including trucks and boats. He planted fig trees in his yard
and
grew tomatoes.”
While most names are drawn from Louisiana and Mississippi
official
lists, many were hunted down through other sources.
Some of those listed through the Web site, but not in
records kept
by the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals,
already are
well known as a result of tragic events after the storm. One
is
Sgt. Paul Accardo of the New Orleans Police Department,
who
committed suicide six days after the storm devastated the
city.
Others include hip-hop musician Jerome “Slim Rome” Spears
and his
fiancee Rachel Harris. After Katrina drove the two out of
New
Orleans, putting both out of work, Spears fatally shot Harris
and
then killed himself in January, at a rental home near Atlanta.
Most of the victim names the Web site is uncovering aren’t
well
known. They include Cerniglia and Aubry, reluctant evacuees
who,
like thousands of others, thought they would soon be
returning to
tidy up their properties.
Their children say there is little doubt that, while not listed
on
the death certificate, Katrina was the central event that
brought
about their deaths.
Cerniglia’s son Ray his father and mother Dorothy bounced
among the
homes of relatives before taking up residence together at
the
Hammond Nursing Home, because they could no longer care
for
themselves. Both were distressed about the high cost of
repairing
their flooded home and fretted at being told they could not
return
there.
“He kept asking about the house, everything like that,” Ray
Cernigla
said. “He couldn’t take care of her, she couldn’t take care of
him.”
Dorothy Cerniglia, 90, died June 4 at North Oaks Medical
Center.
Like her husband, she didn’t make it on the state’s list of
Katrina
victims, and she hasn’t yet made it onto Columbia’s.
Grieving and
wasting away physically, Sam Cerniglia, 84, died Aug. 8 at
the
nursing home.
“A lot of elderly have died in the last year,” Ray Cerniglia
said.
“It was just too much stress on them.”
That view is echoed by Yvonne Clark who, having lost her
own eastern
New Orleans home in the storm, struggled in Texas to help
her
parents after their evacuation there.
The retired schoolteacher had faced a flurry of medical
problems,
including a stroke, and died Sept. 8 at Baylor Medical Center
in
Irving.
Clark now focuses her concern on her father, retired Loyola
University education professor Alvin Aubry. He grieves for
his lost
wife, can no longer live alone and misses New Orleans
terribly, she
said.
“Right now, he’s in a skilled care facility because his
diabetes was
acting up,” the daughter said. “He would love to come
home, but he
can’t come home.”
Coleman Warner can be reached at
cwarner@timespicayune.com or at
(504)826-3311.