Katrina: Tragedy Takes A Human Face (from 9/28/05)
Louisiana Lou
published in the Times Picayune. The newspaper had been off line for
some time after the storm. I missed a few of the early remembrances as
well, but they are all documented here:
http://www.rootsweb.com/~usgenweb/la/orleans/katrina.htm
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Tragedy Takes A Human Face - 3 Bodies Identified In St. Tammany
Submitted: N.O.V.A. November 2005
Source: Times Picayune 09-28-2005
http://ftp.rootsweb.com/pub/usgenweb/la/orleans/history/katrina/00000002.txt
A falling tree killed Gary Hingle, and it wasn't until the next day that
firefighters could retrieve his body from his traumatized relatives.
Ralph Rutledge's sport utility vehicle floated off Interstate 10 as
floodwaters swallowed half of Slidell. And Tommy Kikendall's body ended
up near a heap of debris days after he struggled to survive in his
flooded home, where he wrote a goodbye letter to his wife.
Though the bodies represent only a fraction of the dead pulled from
Hurricane Katrina, the three identifications made public by the St.
Tammany Parish coroner this week put some of the first faces on
southeast Louisiana's death toll. As hundreds of corpses plucked from
floodwaters and unearthed from debris piles lay unidentified at the St.
Gabriel morgue, families of the three men who died in Slidell became
part of the initial wave of relatives to have certainty about their
loved ones' fates.
But the knowledge hasn't amounted to an endpoint for most of them, as
their grieving stretches on while the routine processes for handling the
dead are re-established. Two families will wait five weeks to hold
funerals, and one expects to wait many months longer for a burial.
David Hingle knew hours before Katrina's winds even ceased that his
brother's tombstone would read Aug. 29.
Gary Hingle, 51, stayed for the storm at his house on Hunter's Creek
Road north of Slidell with his fiancee, her two children and his
brother. When water began seeping into his enclosed patio at 5 a.m.,
Hingle woke up his brother and asked him for help rigging two pumps to
bail out the room. They alternately worked on the equipment and tried to
pull large branches away from the house in the moments they thought it
was safe to step outside.
"He was constantly concerned with this one tree," David Hingle said. "He
said if it came down, it would destroy his house. I walked over to the
tree and said, 'This tree is not going anywhere.' I said, 'It's solid.
The top of it's moving, but the trunk is solid.'
"I got about 15 feet away, and I felt the ground tearing all around me.
I stepped to the side, and the tree just missed me."
The uprooted white oak crashed down on Gary Hingle, its mass of branches
and 3-foot trunk obscuring him. David Hingle spent almost 10 minutes
pulling tree limbs from the pile and eventually found his brother's
face. He tried desperately to drag him to level ground and start chest
compressions to revive him.
"He was twisted really bad, but I was able to get his chest down a
little bit," he said. "I put my hand under the top of his head to tilt
his head to clear his airways. When I put my hand around the back, I
felt the top of his head open."
Inside the house, Ana Fradera had crouched with her 18-year-old son and
15 year-old daughter, thinking the crashing tree was going to cave in
the roof. Fradera looked outside and didn't see Gary Hingle, her partner
of five years. David Hingle told her he had died, but Fradera
frantically called 911 anyway to plead with rescuers to try to help him.
At the Emergency Operations Center in Covington, fire department
officials had already determined that toppled trees and wind made
responding to the call impossible.
The family then called David Forsyth, Hingle's business partner of 25
years, who ran through the storm with his son because he couldn't get to
the nearby house in his car. Forsyth said he pulled his friend's body
inside and draped it in towels. When it became clear that rescue crews
wouldn't arrive that day, David Hingle wrapped his brother's body in
plastic sheeting and left it inside. Slidell firefighters cut through
trees blocking Robert Road for hours, reaching Hingle's house the
following morning.
One month and one day after the storm, members of Hingle's family will
gather Friday at Schoen Funeral Home in Covington. Each of them worries
that the massive displacement of residents last month may cause many of
Hingle's friends to miss the opportunity to recount his life - from his
childhood in Gentilly, to his auto repair shop in New Orleans, to his
years as a float lieutenant in the Krewe of Endymion.
And in another hardship brought on by the storm's aftermath, the family
won't drive in a line of cars after the service to pay respects at his
final resting spot. Hingle's body will be stored at a Covington
mausoleum until the keepers of the New Orleans cemetery where his mother
is buried start accepting new caskets. For daughter Lisa Hingle, the
news that it might take six months to bury her father has heaped more
despair onto the month's unending trauma.
"When my grandma passed away, we all went to her grave," she said. "My
dad was talking to her, and it just hit me. I never thought I'd have to
go through this. I'm 20 years old, and I can't handle this. I had my own
life to live, and I wanted my dad to be a part of it."
Rising water on road
The second Katrina victim to be identified in St. Tammany didn't stand a
chance in the floodwaters he was trying to escape on Interstate 10.
By the time Ralph Rutledge, 79, of Marrero tried to head away from
Slidell on Aug. 29, water had already made a river of the road. A truck
driver who stopped before reaching the rushing water near Old Spanish
Trail tried to flag down Rutledge, said Mark Lombard, St. Tammany
coroner's investigator.
But Rutledge's vehicle continued, eventually floating off the interstate
and becoming submerged in water. Lombard said police found the SUV two
days later, still packed with all the evacuation necessities Rutledge
apparently piled in before attempting his escape. Investigators made an
easy identification from the stacks of insurance papers and financial
records stuffed inside, next to family photos and keepsakes.
A godson from Florida identified the remains, Lombard said.
A mystery death
Tommy Kikendall, 42, sent a posthumous message to his family in the form
of a note left in the garage of his New Kingspoint home, where he had
attempted to ride out Katrina's tidal surge.
"He said he wished he would have come with us, and he loved us very
much," said Ida Kikendall, 40, who evacuated to Jackson, Miss., with her
three children while her husband insisted on staying at their home on
Hillary Drive.
Despite the 5-foot water, Kikendall managed to survive inside his garage
and attic. Muddy footprints dotted an antique car in the days afterward,
and the attic door remained open, his wife said.
Nephew Jason Pearl drove from Mississippi to check on Kikendall two days
after the flooding. He found the man lying on his couch. He was alive,
but didn't look healthy, Ida Kikendall said. His legs and feet were
swollen, and he looked pale.
"My husband told him to leave," she said. "I guess he didn't want him to
see him like that. My nephew told him he would come by the next day to
check on him. But when he went back to check on him, the door was open,
and he wasn't anywhere around."
On Sept. 1, Pearl saw police retrieving a body a few blocks away. He
confirmed that the corpse was Kikendall based on his tattoos, and the
coroner's office checked off its third identification.
Ida Kikendall said no one in her family could make sense of the death or
the perplexing scene her husband left behind. A hatchet sat on a bedside
table next to his abandoned glasses that corrected a nearly blind eye;
several ladders lay in the living room, and a photograph of his daughter
riding a horse was pinned to the wall just above the water line.
Lombard said that although he classified the death as storm-related, the
precise cause remains undetermined while the office awaits toxicology
results.
"We don't understand what went wrong," Ida Kikendall said. "We had found
a bag of clothes by the front door like he wanted to leave or something.
We can't figure anything out. I don't know if he was just sick or hurt
or what."
Kikendall's funeral is set Saturday at 2 p.m. at Calgary Baptist Church
in Slidell.
Much work remains
The coroner's office had yet to identify three others who died during
the storm, including a man found dead in a pile of debris on Apple Pie
Ridge Road near U.S. 90 east of Slidell. Lombard said the body, suited
in a life jacket, is likely a man reported missing by a woman whose home
is on that street. She told investigators that a man who was staying in
her house slipped away during the storm surge, while the rest of her
group made it to safety.
Two other bodies found in Lake Pontchartrain on Sept. 3 and Sept. 4
carried far fewer clues.
"We don't have any leads on them at all," Lombard said.
Another 30 to 50 bodies removed from private homes, shelters, nursing
homes and assisted living centers in the days after the storm remain at
the Covington morgue awaiting classification, Lombard said. None
experienced trauma, but he said they likely died after not receiving
medications such as insulin, blood pressure medication and heart medicine.
"We're not sure how we're going to rule those at this point," he said.
"We're trying to determine how many if any were storm-related because of
lack of basic necessities."
The coroner's office has handled another category of Katrina-related
deaths, those who died in the path of falling trees while cleaning up
storm debris well after the hurricane passed through.
Vincent Bertucci, 14, a Ponchatoula High School freshman, died Sept. 16
after a tree he was cutting in Madisonville crushed his abdomen. Lombard
said he was transported to St. Tammany Parish Hospital and airlifted to
Our Lady of the Lake Hospital in Baton Rouge.
Joseph Malisauskas, 40, of Jacksonville, Fla., died Sept. 22 when he
tripped as he was pulling a rope to down a tree, as a co-worker sawed
the trunk. He suffered significant head trauma and was pronounced dead
at Lakeview Medical Center. The locations of the tree-cutting accidents
were not released.