Wimberly and others searched hospitals in downtown New Orleans

The images were awful — people stranded on rooftops painted with the words ‘Help,’ dead in lawn chairs in front of the other Ernest N. Morial Convention Center and others floating in the floodwaters.
William “Bill” Wimberly, general manger, funeral director and embalmer at Ardoin’s Funeral home in Eunice who volunteered to be on a team that helped to retrieve bodies following Hurricane Katrina, captured many images of the storm-ravaged city in the days following the hurricane.
“These pictures mean a lot to me,” Wimberly said.
When the hurricane made landfall, Wimberly was working at another Legacy Funeral Group location in Baton Rouge. Following the hurricane’s passage, Wimberly first went to pick up his mother-in-law in Biloxi and then check on several other Legacy funeral homes in that area. Wimberly then received a call from a friend asking if he would volunteer for a search and recovery team through Kenyon International, which specializes in disasters recovery services including disaster victim identification and aviation accident investigations.
“Search and rescue was winding down (in New Orleans) and it was turning to search and recovery,” Wimberly said. “I was in one of first waves of volunteers for search and recovery. Locals were recovering bodies, too, but they were very overwhelmed.”
Wimberly’s crew comprised of an airboat driver from Florida and his boat, another funeral director and several others. Their task was to recover bodies from medical facilities in the downtown area, including Memorial Hospital, not the bodies of those at homes or in the open floodwaters.
“A lot of what people remember from Katrina are those that died in their homes after the storm,” Wimberly said. “It was pretty intense. We were at Memorial Hospital and other downtown hospitals. Even some of the second floors of some of the hospitals were flooded.”
“No one really talks about the aftermath. There were about 1,500 deaths in New Orleans alone. There are still about 150 to 175 that were never identified. Then there are the ones who washed out into the Gulf and were never recovered.”
According to Wimberly, the search and recovery effort was greatly bolstered when a large morgue was set up south of Baton Rouge. Those helping with the recovery were stationed at a staging ground at Zephyr Field on Airline Highway.
“It looked like a military base,” Wimberly said. “You slept where we could. My first trip to help was for three days, and the search and recovery teams rotated.”
“It is definitely something I will never forget,” Wimberly said. “The pictures mean a lot to me. A lot of volunteers went unnoticed. They spent time away from their families and helped out. There were so many volunteers (helping with search and recovery).”

Contact Claudette Olivier at claudette.olivier@eunicetoday.com