Race, Class, and Money in Disaster

20 pagesWe are a society that treats human remains with respect. In wartime, the dead are transported home and buried with great solemnity, attended by their friends, relatives, neighbors, and public dignitaries. The flags that drape their coffins are ceremoniously folded and reverently handed to spouses, parents, or children. In the days after the World Trade Center collapsed, New York City Fire Department personnel worked around the clock, forming brigades to carefully bring out containers of human remains. During the fire fight at the Pentagon, the FBI meticulously oversaw the search for, and retrieval, documentation, and transportation of, human remains. The remains ranged in size from tissue measured in inches to intact corpses. Each set of remains was carried out of the Pentagon by at least two members the Old Guard elite ceremonial unit from Fort Myers, who were escorted in and out of the Pentagon for that purpose by FEMA officials. Great care was taken to avoid media and Internet spectacles of "body parts."1 Official efforts of this nature are intended to protect human dignity, as well as to honor those who died while serving their country