http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9399130/site/newsweek/The Invisible Body Battalion
A private firm's undertaker unit is witnessing the human cost of Katrina. But they're not talking.
WEB EXCLUSIVE
By Dirk Johnson
Newsweek
Updated: 11:12 a.m. ET Sept. 19, 2005
Sept. 19, 2005 - Meet the body handlers. That’s impossible in the field—the private unit deployed to find, package, and transport the dead in the Mississippi Delta shuns the press. Complete privacy is part of a battle plan aimed at treating each corpse with dignity. Or, at least, so says the company, leaving aside the issue of how the reality might affect public opinion. Their mantra—this was somebody's mother or father, sister or brother, or even a child. Therefore the workers even must be sworn to secrecy about what they’re finding.
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, about 120 of these grim reapers are now working to recover bodies, a job that becomes more dreadful as the waters recede. Kenyon International Emergency Services Inc. specializes in tending to the ruins of human catastrophe—finding and identifying bodies, embalming, counseling families—the work of an undertaker, squared. Founded in 1929 in England after a British Imperial airline crashed, the company recently has worked on the Asian tsunami and the August Helios plane crash. Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco of Louisiana hired Kenyon last Tuesday for $4.3 million to recover the bodies of Louisiana flood victims. "It takes a special breed to do this kind of work," says Jay Kirsch, a Kenyon spokesman. "These are people who are comfortable handling bodies."
They see bodies in rigor mortis, bodies that are decomposing, remains that have been gnawed by rats. But they sign a pledge swearing that they will never talk about it. "They can talk about how terrible New Orleans looked, or how dreadfully hot they were, or how exhausted, but they can never talk about the condition of the bodies," says Kirsch. "These bodies are people. They belong to families who want them back. What if the body was your mother? Would you want somebody to talk about what they had seen?"
Now based in a former Pepsi warehouse in north Houston, Kenyon also has offices in England, Australia and Singapore. It is a subsidiary of publicly traded Service Corporation International, which describes itself as North America's largest provider of funeral and cremation services. Most of its employees work on contract, usually for three weeks at a time, and they are drawn largely from what Hirsch described as "the death industry,"—funeral homes, morgues, hospital workers. Kenyon does not disclose what it pays its body handlers. But Hirsch said simply, "The pay is good."
At the Kenyon office in Houston, just off Interstate 45, the company maintains a vast storage facility—much larger than a football field—to house disaster victims’ belongings. Workers clean, bar-code, photograph and store everything. Kenyon then compiles a catalogue of the belongings for families, who have up to 18 months to claim items. Family members often worry less about recovering the expensive items like Rolex watches than in finding the simple, but priceless, keepsake that said something about a person—a pocketknife, say, or a medallion. If these items go unclaimed, Kenyon buries them.
Kenyon has some 200 clients, ranging from airlines to state and foreign governments. In all, Kenyon contracts with about 1,000 body handlers. To recover bodies after Katrina, these workers are flown in to Houston from all over the country. Authorities tell the teams of 12 to 15—about three quarters are men—where to look for bodies. They put the dead in body bags and move the bags to a morgue in St. Gabriel or to the Convention Center, a holding site. The company has deployed using about 60 white vans and 11 boats.
The workers wear Tyvek jumpsuits, wader hip boots, white hospital masks and sometimes respirators. The odor of death can be nauseating. The workers usually put in 12 to 14 hours, and then sleep on cots in a tent. At the end of each day, the suits go in a hazardous waste dump. Vans and boots are decontaminated.
After any disaster, Kenyon gets an uptick in job applicants. "It's mostly word of mouth," says Hirsch. "I don't think I've ever seen a help-wanted ad for a body handler." Concern for families drives these workers, he said. With a body, they at least can properly grieve a loved one. That thought will sustain them over what could be a long and deeply troubling follow-up to Katrina.
© 2005 Newsweek, Inc.
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