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Bill would require identification on caskets PDF Print E-mail
Written by DeadGirl   
Wednesday, 19 April 2006
BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — The floodwaters of hurricanes Katrina and Rita disturbed hundreds of coffins, many forced from their grave sites without identifying markers to provide information about who was buried inside them. Now, lawmakers are considering ways to make those caskets more identifiable if the state has another flood.

"We have to make sure that family members have some way to identify who is buried here," said Rep. Mickey Frith, D-Kaplan.


The House Commerce Committee on Monday approved a bill that would require funeral homes to include some sort of ID or inscription on each casket that would list the name of the person in the coffin, the date of death and the name of the funeral home that handled the burial.


"Then we could at least identify and have a better way of tracking the heirs to that individual," said Rep. Gil Pinac, D-Crowley, chairman of the committee.


The hurricanes were estimated to have dislodged more than 1,000 coffins in Louisiana. While many were quickly identified and returned to their places of eternal rest, health officials were combing through dental and DNA records to match the names of the missing dead with the remains disturbed from their burial sites.


Under the bill, the exact way the caskets would be tagged would be left to the board that oversees funeral homes in Louisiana after representatives of the industry said different types of identifying markers might be needed depending on the type of casket involved.


Some caskets already have steel nameplates affixed to them, but Rep. Nita Hutter's bill would require the identifying markers on all coffins by law.


Frith questioned how strict the board would be in deciding the type of IDs used, noting that many of the flood-damaged coffins were forced out of the ground or tombs and floated to new locations.


"Is it something that we are sure won't wash away 50 years from now?" he said of the identification tags.


Some lawmakers questioned whether the measure would add delays and increased prices to funerals and burial expenses, but Hutter, R-Chalmette, said she believes the cost to funeral homes would be small.


The committee approved the bill without objection, sending it to the House for debate.


Meanwhile, a separate House committee approved legislation that would change the length of time it takes for a family to determine a person who went missing after the hurricanes has died.


Currently, the state requires a five-year waiting period to declare that a missing person is legally dead, but Rep. Monica Walker, D-Marksville, has sponsored a bill that would shorten that to two years for anyone who went missing after the hurricanes.


Walker said the measure would give families who lost loved ones during the hurricanes some emotional and legal closure. More than 1,100 people died because of Katrina, and more than 800 are still missing after that storm.


The House Civil Law and Procedure Committee approved the bill without objection and sent it to the full House for debate.

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