Outrage after victims' bodies left in collapsed building for months

JoeMorgue

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JoeMorgue
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//Note. I could have sworn we had a thread about the initial building collapse but I can't find it. If I'm just dense and couldn't find it please merge this into it.//

(CNN) It's been more than three months since the Hard Rock Hotel construction site collapsed in New Orleans. The crumbled building sticks out as an eyesore on the edge of the city's historic French Quarter as Mardi Gras celebrations approach. But what's even more horrific is that the bodies of two workers killed in the collapse have still not been recovered.

The victims are 63-year-old Jose Ponce Arreola and 36-year-old Quinnyon Wimberly.

The outcry to recover the two bodies reignited this week after a tarp meant to conceal one of the bodies was blown away by the wind, exposing the body to the public.
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https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/22/us/hard-rock-collapse-body-trnd/index.html
 
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And what do we hear, it's not the fact that the bodies haven't been recovered that is terrible, it's people sharing photos of the body that is terrible.

"To be clear: capturing or sharing images of the victims in such a condition is irresponsible, it is indefensible, and it is not who we are as New Orleanians," a statement from Cantrell's office read, adding, "we urge news outlets, residents, and social media users to have nothing to do with making a tragic situation needlessly worse."

Not a mention that perhaps not retrieving the bodies could be a tad indefensible.

Yes putting the pictures on Twitter may be distasteful but they can only be put on Twitter because the mayor's city hasn't recovered the bodies.

Surprised he's not saying it's the dead people fault for being under the rubble...
 
Having a little trouble wrapping my head around this one.

Someone got to one of the bodies and was able to put a tarp over it to cover it from view, so the body must be fairly out in the open and accessible? Yet no one can get it down for months?
 
Darat said:
And what do we hear, it's not the fact that the bodies haven't been recovered that is terrible, it's people sharing photos of the body that is terrible.

"To be clear: capturing or sharing images of the victims in such a condition is irresponsible, it is indefensible, and it is not who we are as New Orleanians," a statement from Cantrell's office read, adding, "we urge news outlets, residents, and social media users to have nothing to do with making a tragic situation needlessly worse."

Not a mention that perhaps not retrieving the bodies could be a tad indefensible.

Yes putting the pictures on Twitter may be distasteful but they can only be put on Twitter because the mayor's city hasn't recovered the bodies.

Surprised he's not saying it's the dead people fault for being under the rubble...
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And I'm sure a PR crisis that might hurt the tourism bottom line right before Mardi Gras isn't on the mayor's mind at all, no pinky swear he's totes caring for the dead people guys seriously he's for realzies.
 
Darat said:
.....
Not a mention that perhaps not retrieving the bodies could be a tad indefensible.

Yes putting the pictures on Twitter may be distasteful but they can only be put on Twitter because the mayor's city hasn't recovered the bodies.

Surprised he's not saying it's the dead people fault for being under the rubble...
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This is all pretty gruesome, but what do they actually need to do to recover the bodies? Would it endanger other workers? As bad as this is, it would be worse if anybody else gets hurt.
 
Bob001 said:
This is all pretty gruesome, but what do they actually need to do to recover the bodies? Would it endanger other workers? As bad as this is, it would be worse if anybody else gets hurt.
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If this was just a case of, for instance, a further part of the building had collapsed and revealed the body that would have been one thing.

But as noted somebody gotten close enough to put a tarp over it. That raises question.

And it's not like it's been a week. It's been 3 months.

The Oklahoma City Bombing happened on April 19th and recovery was over on May 23rd. And that was 168 bodies.
 
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Not to get horrifically gruesome, but after three months, the body must be in advanced decomposition. If, say, the legs were visible from the street, but the upper half of the body was trapped under unstable wreckage, I guess we could understand not getting it out immediately. But pulling this much time, they're pulling home boy out with a shovel and bags now. Apparently in view of the street.
 
That's the thing. Just leaving a body.. around is just never a good idea. There's about a dozen ways this is just... awful.

It's horribly insulting to the victims and their family and not exactly a good thing from a public health perspective.

And if the bodies haven't been removed I have to question what investigations into the collapse and it causes have really been done.
 
Right. Even if the option was down to collapsing part of the rubble to extract the body, damaging it further, that would have to be better than making a public display out of it. New Orleans chose the most callous approach conceivable.
 
And again if this happen a week or two after... okay the ancient rule of "(Crap) Happens" could maybe have been invokable depending on circumstances. (Crap) does indeed sometimes happen.

But it's been 3 months and from what I can read they haven't done anything yet. This isn't like there's been some non-stop recovery/demolition project.

If the argument is "Well it wasn't safe to retrieve the bodies yet" then... when was it gonna be? And what were they doing to make it safe to recover the bodies? Because... they weren't doing anything. What was the plan do nothing and hope something changes?

The building collapses, they threw a tarp over the bodies and forgot about it.
 
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Workers' bodies can't be recovered until plan to stabilize Hard Rock site is done, city says

NOLA said:
Search crews can’t clear the way to the bodies of two dead construction workers still buried under the ruins of the collapsed Hard Rock Hotel until contractors complete plans to further stabilize the building ahead of an eventual demolition, city officials said Tuesday.

Four contractors, along with engineers, are working on proposals for the owners of the ill-fated construction project, New Orleans Fire Superintendent Tim McConnell told reporters.

McConnell didn’t provide a timeline for when the planning may be finished, other than to say the process will “take some time.” Nonetheless, until that happens, McConnell said search crews won’t be able to retrieve the bodies of the two workers trapped on the site, which the fire chief described as still “very dangerous.”

He said the contractors' proposals are required to address "whether it's even feasible to get the (workers') remains" and, if so, how search crews can go about that. McConnell said it is the responsibility of the owners, 1031 Canal Development, to figure out how to secure the building enough for the bodies to be recovered and a full demolition eventually to take place...
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https://www.nola.com/news/article_0403b2cc-fa98-11e9-9826-d7d7c25b7d73.html
 
Ok, there's something really wrong here. Workers seem to be able to move freely about the area. it's not likely teetering on the brink or they wouldn't be walking around. Based on the tarped area, it does seem an effort could be made to extract thre body, with a small effort of will.
 
Thermal said:
Having a little trouble wrapping my head around this one.

Someone got to one of the bodies and was able to put a tarp over it to cover it from view, so the body must be fairly out in the open and accessible? Yet no one can get it down for months?
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In order to remove that body it may require cutting it into pieces. A guy in a crane basket hacks away at whatever is exposed and puts the pieces in a plastic bucket. Not too cool.
 
I Am The Scum said:
Lode-bearing corpses :con2:
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//Total hijack//

There's a weird trope that pops up Japanese folklore a lot that uses that as a motif, of someone becoming trapped under a load bearing part of a structure and sacrificing themselves.

Junji Ito did a story called "The Principle Post" where a father becomes trapped under the family houses principle load bearing post and refuses rescue so as to not collapse the house and there's an older legend from Feudal Japan that used the same basic setup.
 
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Belz... said:
I don't get it. If they can get there and put a towel over the body, then surely they can pull it out of there, no?
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Not directly over the body. Hung a tarp curtain-style to block the view of the body that was a few feet behind it, partially under rubble.
 
Dollars to donuts what's going to come of this in the end is the city didn't want to pony up the money to demolish the building and put it in "We'll get around to it when we get around to it" pile.

New Orleans is a big city. There's money in the budget to demolish one building so they can retrieve those bodies.

There's no way to spin this. If they can't retrieve the bodies because the structure isn't safe, the structure should have been demolished by now.

If they can (which as noted they can get there to put a tarp on it which.. raises questions) then they should.
 
Thermal said:
Right. Even if the option was down to collapsing part of the rubble to extract the body, damaging it further, that would have to be better than making a public display out of it. New Orleans chose the most callous approach conceivable.
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Without knowing the constraints they were under, the trade-offs they considered, and the rationale they settled on, I don't think we can say that with such certainty.

Also, I have faith that these people did not set out to do the most callous thing possible, and do not think of what they did as such.
 
theprestige said:
Without knowing the constraints they were under, the trade-offs they considered, and the rationale they settled on, I don't think we can say that with such certainty.

Also, I have faith that these people did not set out to do the most callous thing possible, and do not think of what they did as such.
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I don't think they set out to do the worst thing. They chose to by default. Guys are pictured walking around apparently a few feet away. This does not seem to be insurmountable.
 
Thermal said:
This does not seem to be insurmountable.
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So you remove the body with surgical instruments, a hacksaw and a soup ladle. Then all the juicy parts and bone fragments go into a plastic bucket. Then you give the bucket to his family.
 
William Parcher said:
So you remove the body with surgical instruments, a hacksaw and a soup ladle. Then all the juicy parts and bone fragments go into a plastic bucket. Then you give the bucket to his family.
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Actually better than letting it be picked at by seagulls in view of the street like the rest of the trash there, yes.
 
theprestige said:
I don't think we can say this. By default?
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They did nothing, knowing there was a body rotting away in view of the street with workers milling about the area. Hard to accept there was something stopping them from acting. So yeah, by default or plan. I am hoping to be generous by saying default.
 
Thermal said:
They did nothing, knowing there was a body rotting away in view of the street with workers milling about the area. Hard to accept there was something stopping them from acting. So yeah, by default or plan. I am hoping to be generous by saying default.
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Technically it wasn't in view of the street until the tarp moved.
 
Thermal said:
Actually better than letting it be picked at by seagulls in view of the street like the rest of the trash there, yes.
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We don't know anything about what is exposed to view. It could be that only a pair of boots is visible.
 
Oh yeah let's split the hair about how much of the body that's been left out for 3 months has to be visible before it's a problem.
 
JoeMorgue said:
But as noted somebody gotten close enough to put a tarp over it. That raises question.
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I was confused about that too. But:

JoeMorgue said:
*Wipes brow* Well crisis averted people! Everybody go home, nothing to see here, they have a solution.

They are putting up another tarp.

https://www.nola.com/news/article_3b5696ae-3d5f-11ea-b7ed-2bd93680875a.html
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If you follow this link and look at the picture, the tarp they put up isn't over the body. It's on the outside of the building, obstructing the view into the building where the body is. I can't tell where the body is, but there could easily be quite some distance between the body and the tarp. If the first tarp was positioned anything like this tarp (and I suspect it was), then whoever put up the first one wouldn't need to approach the body either.

Still, 3 months is a long time to not do something about an unsafe structure, even if what you have to do is collapse it.
 
Thermal said:
They did nothing, knowing there was a body rotting away in view of the street with workers milling about the area. Hard to accept there was something stopping them from acting. So yeah, by default or plan. I am hoping to be generous by saying default.
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You're making an argument from incredulity.

I'd need to know more about how they arrived at their decision, before I judge them for it.
 
I wonder if it's a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" type of situation.

Maybe there isn't a realistic way to get the body out without significant damage or worse (not that I guess that would matter now). There were stories during the 9/11 collapse that the bodies would get ground up by the falling building. If they can't remove it and the only option is to collapse the building, maybe they were weighing their options. Possibly completely destroy the body of this man, or try to find a way to recover it from its spot.

No idea, just spitballing here.
 
William Parcher said:
We don't know anything about what is exposed to view. It could be that only a pair of boots is visible.
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Joe's link said, "Wimberly's body is difficult to see with the naked eye from the street, but with a zoom lens, his legs are visible."
 
It is pretty hard to image a situation where placing a tarp over a body is possible but extracting the body is not. I definitely do not want to do more research to figure out the exact situation though. The posted quotes and links make it seem like its just paper work, which hopefully is not the whole story.
 
ahhell said:
It is pretty hard to image a situation where placing a tarp over a body is possible but extracting the body is not. I definitely do not want to do more research to figure out the exact situation though. The posted quotes and links make it seem like its just paper work, which hopefully is not the whole story.
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Follow Joe's link. The picture is innocuous, there's nothing graphic about it and you can't see any signs that there even is a body anywhere, but it makes it fairly clear how they can put up the tarp in front of (not "over") the body without being able to recover the body.
 
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