Once while giving an exam on disaster management I asked my students to number in importance, 1-5 the steps that should be taken after a disaster. I wanted to know that they understood the concept that number one is take care of the injured and living, and number 5 is take care of the dead. Not surprisingly, one student, (not destined for public office obviously), chose the most important task as taking care of the dead!

While most people understand the dead will be cared for after a hurricane such as Ike, most don’t think of the task of taking care of the dead who were dead before the storm. What a horrific and grim task to enter your local cemetery and see caskets stacked on top of each other above ground. But that is just the task many communities face in the aftermath of a hurricane. You don’t hear about it much, but it is an issue. Imagine part of your life returning to normal being re-burying your previously dead.

One story documents Clarence Brown, a blues musician and Grammy Award Winner in 1982. He fled Hurricane Katrina in 2005 seeking refuge in Orange, Texas but died 2 weeks after the storm. Now Hurricane Ike has disinterred him from his final hometown resting place. My favorite quote in this story is from Wayne Sparrow, third generation funeral director from Orange, Texas and Sparrow Funeral Home. After looking at the damage to the historic cemetery he said, "These are somebody's somebodies, and it needs to be taken care of as quickly as possible.” He’s the kind of funeral director I would want in my community. Here’s a link to the story, and here’s a 90 second video of the cemetery. The narrator of the video is a city worker; you won’t see him until the end of the clip.

Remember to keep these hard working people in your thoughts and prayers too, lest they think their work is not important to restoring their communities.