Flooding Caskets and Floating Corpses

Louisiana’s burial practices are not viable in the face of accelerating climate change.

Casket flooding has been a problem in Louisiana longer than climate change, but as sea levels rise and hurricanes become more powerful and frequent, burial solutions in the state need to evolve — and fast. Louisiana loses land the size of a football field to the rising tide every hour. But for Louisiana’s dead, the rising tides of climate change isn’t a nebulous prediction but a current reality.

While combing the swamps for caskets washed astray from 2005’s Hurricane Rita, shocked authorities found caskets missing since 1957’s Hurricane Audrey. After the floodwaters of 2012’s Hurricane Isaac washed away, horrified searchers found that about 200 of the caskets that washed up on Mississippi River levees were older and made of wood. These flimsy coffins broke apart in the forceful tide which scattered human remains all up the river.

The Great Flood of 2016 damaged 35 graveyards in Louisiana, according to the Louisiana Department of Health. One of the hardest hit was the Plainview Cemetery in East Baton Rouge, which saw caskets spilling out of water-clogged vaults. Ultimately, the flooding affected 50 graves at Plainview. It damaged only 10 graves in the Evening Star Baptist Church Cemetery in East Baton Rouge, but its carnage exposed human remains and a few caskets floated into the nearby forest.

In cities like Baton Rouge, it is more common to build cement vaults just below ground level and bury the casket inside. This is more a cultural preference than one to deal with the regular floods, and these vaults are often uprooted in storms. Floodwaters weaken the vault’s airtight seal, so caskets can pop out from a flood or hurricane.

After recovering the bodies, identifying them is another great challenge. The infamous Hurricane Katrina surfaced about 1500 graves in 2005. Not only were the living devastated, but also some buried dead who washed away with the pulsing floodwaters.

Afterward, Louisiana introduced legislation that required identifying information on every new coffin to prevent another scramble to put names to the displaced dead. But labels and death certificates usually wash away or…

Related posts:

The Pope is the latest to speak about the threat that global warming and rising sea levels implicate for all. He stated this in a conference where he met with delegation of leaders from the Pacific…

Vortexes are spiral forms that swirl around an invisible center line. You can find them in your bathtub when water drains and even in cloud formations above Saturn’s north pole. The vortex in this…