A macabre aspect of Louisiana culture, many residents of the Pelican State bury their loved ones above ground. Unfortunately, floating coffins amid a storm are a common sight, and it can be difficult to find loved ones after the fact.
Researchers have worked on a solution to this problem for years. Now, Louisiana Department of Health senior official Henry Yennie and many others, including cemetery recovery consultant Arbie Goings, created a mobile app to identify the caskets and the location from which they floated.
The creators plan to travel to the cemeteries most likely to experience displaced coffins and tag the units.
“Once these displaced tombs and vaults and caskets are found, then we would know who they are, where they go, and it wouldn’t be a mystery,” Goings said.
The problems associated with identifying coffins and the people inside them date back to Hurricane Katrina. According to Yennie, the state attempted to resolve this issue by having funeral homes insert a tube containing a piece of paper with identifying information inside each casket.
“The problem with that is many times they wrote that information in ink, and those tubes aren’t waterproof,” Yennie said.
Following the floods in March and August of 2016, Yennie and Goings realized the urgent need for the app, which contains a form called the “Cemetery Recovery Form” where information about found units will be posted.
Goings encourages families across Louisiana whose loved ones are missing from cemeteries to report the missing units to officials. These reports not only help families find loved ones but aid the app’s creators in finding the same units if they float away in the future.
One major decision they have yet to make is how to tag the units. Some ideas include placing barcodes on the coffins and tagging them with beacons. According to Yennie, they’ve already placed the beacons on units in a small Slidell cemetery to test them out.
“You can literally walk into or near a cemetery, and if these beacons are on some tombs or vaults, you can see the layout of who’s there, if you’ve marked them previously,” Yennie said.
The creators say inexpensive barcodes placed inconspicuously on the units appear to be the best option.
The app’s trial period has yet to conclude, so it is currently unavailable for public use. The creators don’t even have an official name for the app yet, simply calling it the “Cemetery App.”