The official death toll of Hurricane Katrina is more than 1,300. The unofficial toll of the storm may take that a lot higher.
Though not quantifiable in the orthodox fashion, because so many area health agencies are still in disarray, a belief exists among many here that the natural mortality rate of New Orleanians -- whether still in the city or relocated -- has increased dramatically since, and perhaps because of, Katrina.
The daily newspaper has seen a rise in reported deaths. Local funeral homes are burying just as many people as they did last year, though the population has decreased. Families say that their kin who had been in good health are dying, and attribute that to the stress brought on by the hurricane, flooding and relocations.
It is too early for state officials to have statistics for last year, said Bob Johannessen of the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals. And epidemiologists are reluctant to draw conclusions based on anecdotal information.
‘Hidden killer’
Still, stress here is palpable, and it is overwhelming people of all ages, said psychiatrist James Barbee, director of an anxiety clinic at Louisiana State University. "People are struggling terribly."
Barbee said he has seen many more patients with serious problems -- hypertension, diabetes out of control, suicidal tendencies -- than before the storm. "Katrina took all order away from lives," he said, and the effect can be extremely deleterious.
The increase in deaths is seen the pages of the local newspaper, the Times-Picayune, where the number of deaths reported in January was up 25 percent from the same month in 2005, according to publisher Ashton Phelps Jr.
New Orleans Parish Coroner Frank Minyard said he doesn't keep records on natural deaths, but that he believes "stress causes an increase in the rise of natural-death rates."
Louis Charbonnet, 67, president of Charbonnet-Labat Funeral Home on St. Philip Street in the Tremé neighborhood, said, "It's an absolute fact." New Orleanians are "dying away," he said. "They are distressed by being displaced."
Stress, he added, is the "hidden killer."
Stress everywhere
There is stress in the air. It's as tangible here as the gumbo-thick fog that occasionally rolls over the city. People have lost their loved ones, homes, jobs, cars, pets, keepsakes, their general sense of comfort and good health.
Ronald Chisom said his 84-year-old mother, Evelyn Comeaux, was doing just fine before Katrina. She took her medications but she could get out and about a lot of the time. "She liked to go to the casino with her girlfriends," Chisom, 64, said. When the floodwaters came, Comeaux was rescued by helicopter, taken to the airport, flown to Austin and then eventually to Houston where she was reunited with her son, who had lost his home in the flood.
Chisom, executive director of the People's Institute for Survival and Beyond, a group that fights racism, noticed that over the next few months his mother's health deteriorated rapidly. "She would say, 'I'm really tired,' and 'I'm uncomfortable,' " Chisom said. He thinks now that she was not only talking about her physical state, but also about her circumstances and her life.
While he was in Washington at a fundraiser, he received a call from his daughter that Comeaux had died. "I know stress. . . ." he said, "The stress of everything got to her. It's getting to me."
Readers of the Times-Picayune are talking about the surge in death notices. "If you look," said Janis Collins, who works in the office of a private school in Metairie, "there are twice as many, sometimes three times as many death notices in the paper as there used to be." She said most of the deaths seem to be older people, 60 and older, who are just giving up the ghost.
On a recent Friday, there were more than two pages of photos and remembrances. All but six of the 61 people listed died this year.
Some deaths that occurred earlier after Katrina are just now being honored with a notice.
Vickie Cochran, 54, who takes death notices over the phone at the newspaper, said there has been an explosion of business. "Everybody's been commenting on that in our office."
"I think people are just under so much stress -- stress of the move, worried about money, jobs, everything," she said.
Billy Henry, 57, of Bultman Funeral Home on St. Charles Avenue, said, "We definitely have seen an unbelievable increase."
"The number of deaths has increased," agreed Michael Kelly, 37, of the Lake Lawn Metairie Funeral Home and Cemeteries. His company, which owns three funeral homes in the New Orleans area, buried as many people, maybe a few more, this January as in January last year. The difference is that the population has dropped dramatically -- from more than a million in the Gulf Coast area to less than 600,000.
Falling population
New Orleans's population has fallen from 450,000 to less than 200,000, a mayoral commission estimates. So the percentage of deaths is up, Kelly said.
There are mitigating factors, he and others pointed out. For instance, there are fewer funeral homes in business.
Charbonnet, who has been in the profession for decades, said that doesn't explain his steady business. The owner of one of the largest African American funeral homes in the New Orleans area, Charbonnet said most of the 12 or so people he is burying each week had a contract with his home and planned to hold their services there. He also pointed out that the African American population of New Orleans has been drastically reduced and he is seeing about the same number of deaths as he did at a peak before the storm.
Charbonnet insisted that, in many cases, Katrina is the unofficial cause of death.
‘Shipping bodies back home’
Henry agreed. "People in nursing homes who were displaced or jerked around" are feeling the effects. A lot of deaths are occurring out of town, and "they are shipping bodies back home," he said.
Another funeral director, Mike Misshore, 46, of Gertrude Geddes Willis Funeral Home, said, "Go out to Delta Airlines at the airport. You'll see a lot of people coming in." He was talking about dead people.
On a recent morning, Charbonnet's funeral home buried a retired school principal who had lost her home and was living in Baton Rouge.
"She was a good, strong woman," said Charbonnet. "Her family feels her death can be attributed to the stress of moving, and having no place to settle herself."
She was in her early seventies, he said, and in excellent health -- no illnesses, no signs of deteriorating strength. She died unexpectedly in her sleep.
