From a funeral director deployed to handle bodies in New Orleans:
"DMort is telling us to expect up to 40,000 bodies," Dan Buckner said, quoting officials with the Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Team, a volunteer arm of Homeland Security.
His partner, Dan Hicks, of Paducah, Ky., was deployed Monday. Buckner, of Dickson, is on standby. Their funeral home is one of several collection sites for donations to be taken to the Red Cross in Fayetteville on Wednesday for transfer to places in need.
The 40,000 estimate does "not include the number of disinterred remains that have been displaced from ... mausoleums," Buckner told the Times-Gazette Monday.
The Times-Pickayune estimates at least 10,000 dead, and discusses in grisly detail finding some of the bodies at the convention center. Don't read that link unless you have a strong stomach. It's horrifying. I keep thinking about my family members being caught in something like this. When they're talking about the elderly, I keep picturing my mom's mother, and it breaks my heart.
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