NEW ORLEANS - A company assigned the delicate duty of collecting Hurricane Katrina's dead in Louisiana wanted out of the federal job days later, complaining of a "bureaucratic quagmire" in its dealings with the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Kenyon International asked FEMA to find someone else to do the work in a Sept. 11 letter to Coast Guard Vice Adm. Thad Allen, head of the agency's response to Katrina. The disaster management company stayed on the job, however, and signed a contract with the state of Louisiana days later.
Kenyon's president, Robert A. Jensen, wrote that his company was finding it difficult to meet its own standards in the task of recovering bodies as federal officials asked it to perform more and more duties. He also cited bureaucratic confusion — in one instance, he said, Kenyon workers had taken bodies to mortuary facilities only to find that the facilities had been relocated without the company's knowledge.
"Kenyon must have the authority to control what we need to get the job done without the impact of the bureaucratic quagmire in which we find ourselves," Jensen wrote.
The Associated Press obtained a copy of the letter Friday, a day after a Republican-dominated congressional committee released memos in which a FEMA official blamed state officials' inaction for delays in recovering bodies.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/katrina_bodies
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