South Georgia mortician serves New Orleans - WALB.com, Albany News, Weather, Sports

South Georgia mortician serves New Orleans

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September 9, 2005

Albany --- A South Georgia mortician trained to handle mass casualties works to help provide dignity to the thousands who are feared dead in New Orleans.

Michael Fowler works at Poteat Funeral Home in Albany, but is also part of a special team of morticians called to work during disasters. He's worked during the flood of 1994, the September 11 attacks, and several international disasters, including the tsunami.

Funeral home owner James Griffin says not only will handling the large number of casualties be a big job, but identifying them could be difficult. "With the mass flooding they had in New Orleans dental records will probably be non-obtainable, medical records are out, so that I guess the only thing that they could do would probably be DNA testing," says James Griffin.

Fowler has been in Louisiana for a week transporting remains from New Orleans to St. Gabriel and setting up a staging area and morgue there.

Griffin says he isn't sure how long Fowler will be working in Louisiana.

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