AP - Thanks for the doom and gloom
Apparently Andrew Bridges at AP wants military families to have more to worry about:
WASHINGTON - Families of veterans who die during a bird flu outbreak shouldn't count on burying their loved ones in any of the 120 national cemeteries. The Department of Veterans Affairs foresees closing the military graveyards in a pandemic because of staffing problems.
Later in the article, he alludes to the fact that if the scenario he's writing about occurs, there's going to be lots of very understandable shortages:
As much as 40 percent of the national work force could be off the job in a pandemic, according to federal estimates.
I would think it's a given that the VA would experience personnel shortages as well. The article could have been written to simply be informative, but Mr. Bridges apparently felt compelled to add some gratuitous gruesomeness:
During the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, the dead were sometimes buried in trenches, Fells said. Should another pandemic strike, it could take days to bury the dead, and perhaps only then in mass or temporary graves, he added.
**snip**
"If there's truly a catastrophic kind of thing — whether it be a bird flu pandemic or a massive, terrorist-instigated attack that would claim tens or hundreds of thousands of lives — a lot of that frankly involves bulldozers," said Mike Duggan, the American Legion's deputy director for national security and a Vietnam veteran.
**snip**
As for the dead, the VA said it may have to store bodies in refrigerated warehouses or trucks outfitted as temporary morgues.
**snip**
Those burials could stop or be put on hold during a pandemic, presumably even as the tally of dead surges, according to a VA plan that lays out how it will cope with an influenza outbreak.
I'm sure thousands of military families will feel comforted by this article, thanks to the "sensitivity" of Mr. Bridges and Associated Press.
Comments
Ummm....one of the things about the military is that you have to have contingency plans about EVERYTHING imaginable. (One problem with 9-11 is that no one IMAGINED it except Tom Clancy).
A second thing is that the military, like the Catholic church, remembers history.
So when HIV started, our National Guard unit was briefed, starting with the story demise of mercenaries in 1500 by syphillis..
Similarly, if a 1918 flu type epidemic occured, we would have mass graves.
Indeed, I grew up near a national cemetary. In it was a trench/mass grave of Confederate soldiers who died of typhoid at a POW camp nearby.
Yes, families might be "Upset" but that's because Americans tend to think they are beyond threats of disease, war, and anarchy.
But someone has to remember that we are not, and plan accordingly
Posted by: tioedong
|
June 20, 2006 6:51 PM
It's fine to plan - and I attended more than my share of blunt briefings during my career (chem warfare training comes to mind) - but the article was written to be much more gruesome than it needed to be.
And remember, they can cue up stories like this with the press to release if a pandemic becomes imminent (which it currently isn't).
Civilian spouses and families have enough to worry about without the image of their loved ones being bulldozed into a mass grave haunting them as well.
Posted by: LB | June 20, 2006 8:40 PM