Kenyon, which worked at the World Trade Center site in 2001 and retrieved bodies of Australian citizens in Thailand after last year’s tsunami, arrived here nine days after Katrina under a short-term agreement with the Federal Emergency Management Agency to support the state’s Department of Health and Hospitals direct the recovery of corpses.
Under that arrangement, Berry said, Kenyon personnel, who must wear hazardous-material-proof suits and undergo toxic decontamination daily, were living at a Baton Rouge funeral home and commuting about four hours round-trip to visit work zones. They also traveled in civilian panel vans that could not access areas with a few feet of flooding or downed trees, he said.
“Nothing was made available to us,†he said. “We have simply asked for that relief, and it had not yet been found.â€
A FEMA spokesman could not be reached to respond to those comments.
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