Morgue's new trailer awaits next hurricane HOUMA, La. -- At Bayou Terrebonne and the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway, a long, white trailer overlooks the downtown Houma marina.
The trailer has been empty nearly two years,
but the flip of a switch from a morgue employee can have it roaring to life, its refrigerator dropping the temperature inside in preparation for a new spate of bodies.
Bought by the Federal Emergency Management Agency during 2005's hurricanes,
the trailer stored the overflow of bodies from nursing homes in parishes stricken more severely than Terrebonne, said Greg Whitney, an investigator for the parish Coroner's Office.
FEMA gave 200 of its distinctive blue body bags to the parish. The bags are stripped down for emergency use - no handles, for example - but are still high quality, Whitney said.
When the state set up its temporary morgue in St. Gabriel, it used trailers similar to the one that remains in Terrebonne for storage. Since the crisis passed, however, Terrebonne's morgue trailer has not been used. Though it's the same model used by any company that ships refrigerated goods, no one else wants it, Whitney said, for a simple reason: It had bodies in it.
Now, the onsite trailer is kept as a precaution. In the wake of a deadly 2005 storm season, and in the midst of another one that has already produced two Category 5 storms, officials are hanging on to it, just in case.
A morgue trailer may conjure images in the CSI-trained mind of gleaming surfaces and precision instruments, but Terrebonne's offers no such glamour.
It's a large, completely empty box that can get quite cold."It's as plain as plain can get," Whitney said.The trailer's main asset is its size. The Terrebonne Parish Morgue has space for 10 bodies, and only eight at present, because of problems with two units - and that's the biggest game in town. The Lafourche morgue can hold three, Leonard J. Chabert Medical Center can hold two, and no one else - not even hospitals or funeral homes - has any storage at all, Whitney said.
By contrast, the 47-foot trailer can hold an estimated 60 to 80 bodies, if needed, Whitney said.
"We start looking around, where can we put the bodies?," Whitney said.
"If it's natural deaths or whatever, you have to have some sort of contingency plan."It also has another design asset - stainless steel floors, which are remarkably easy to clean. The large refrigerator unit up front can easily bring the temperature inside to 50 degrees or lower.
"The cooling unit brings it down enough, so that the bodies don't undergo any more deterioration," Whitney said. The body bags also help hold in the cool air. "The trick is to make sure the body doesn't start decaying."
The trailer wound up on waterfront property when the parish asked the Coroner's Office to move it off the parish yard for space reasons. The morgue was a decent choice because employees stop by regularly to make sure its cooling unit is in good working order. Plus, investigators are often called out at night, so they have ready access to the trailer if they need it.
People often ask what the trailer is for, Whitney said. The back doors, he said, are firmly locked if bodies are present.
"You get some weird people in this world," Whitney said.
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