Returning to New Orleans after Katrina and performing his duties as coroner
Dr. Frank Minyard by Angie Juban, 2007; 4700.1956
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Dr. Frank Minyard. Photo by David Breidenbach.
TEMPESTS: Storms in the Archives
Dr. Frank Minyard: When the hurricane hit, I was at my farm. I always go to my . . . I have a farm in Folsom. I'm a cowboy [laughing] and I raise cattle. So I came on in here Tuesday. I didn't know about the flood because we had no communication. I didn't know . . . I knew that the hurricane passed and everything looked okay. Except all my trees were down, my fences were down and my animals were out. Except for that, everything was fine. [laughing] So we . . . I drove in. I tried to go down Tulane Avenue and the flood was there. And I tried to go down Canal Street and it was all flooded. I had to get out of my car and wade and walk and swim and everything. But it just dawned on me then that this was a disaster beyond my ability to do anything. Because, you know, we were going to go pick up bodies and bring them to the coroner's office or wherever but the whole place was flooded. In front of my office there was ten feet of water. You needed boats to get around.
Angie Juban: Had you called in your staff to come as well?
Minyard: No. First of all, there's no phones. But second of all is that the staff, most of them went to the office to ride out the storm because it's a solid building. They went out and they rode out the storm. I mean, it was the perfect place. So we had about ten people in the office. Little did I know, we would be trapped there for five days. So as far as preparation, I mean, I had preparations in my own mind, but nothing of the magnitude of what happened. So I knew we couldn't help, because we were held up. We couldn't get out of the office.
Juban: Right.
Minyard: You know, once I got there in a boat, I couldn't get out until Friday.
Juban: What responsibilities did you have at the DMORT [Disaster Mortuary Response Team] site?
Minyard: To determine who gets autopsied and . . . It turned out not to be a responsibility because I said, "Everybody gets autopsied."
Juban: What was your reasoning? What were you thinking when you were making that decision?
Minyard: These are . . . A thousand of these people are my people, from New Orleans, Jefferson [Parish], St. Bernard and Plaquemines [Parishes]. A few from St. Tammany [Parish], not many. So I said, "These are my people and I'm treating them the same way I treat them when I'm in my office. We find out exactly what caused them to die. And as long as people died at the hands of the good Lord, then I'm happy. But if they died at somebody else's hands, we're not happy." And that's basically what it was, said we're not just going to scuff them off because we don't like the living conditions or we don't like the working conditions, for sure. But we are going to treat them like they are my people, my friends. And I did have a lot of friends, lots of friends. I saw a couple of them, too. But I could . . . I knew their names and whatnot. I didn't want to go see them. Because these people had been laying in the water, most of them, for two weeks. And then in the hot houses, in the attics, on the roofs, you know, the deterioration was tremendous. But I did see one of my dearest friends, I didn't plan to see him, he just popped up [phone ringing] so that was hard.