NOAA

More than six weeks after Hurricane Ida made landfall on Southeast Louisiana, coffins are still strewn across the community of Ironton.

Hurricane Ida’s storm surge left the multiple-ton vaults strewn around the town, “like they were cardboard boxes,” Rev. Haywood Johnson Jr. told the AP.

The lingering coffins are a visceral illustration of the trauma and abandonment of small communities like Ironton after the massive storm. “Once you bury a relative, you expect that to be the permanent resting place,” Rev. Johnson lamented.