On August 16, 1969, Hurricane Camille made landfall as a category 5 in southern Mississippi. Camille took the lives of around 345 people and caused at least $1.42 billion in damages.
Virginia State Heath Officials still have unidentified remains and they would like your help identifying them. From WSET: “Hurricane Camille killed 124 people in Virginia when it struck in August 1969. The Virginia Department of Health says eight victims remain unidentified.”
The remains belong to “two adults aged 30 to 50 years, an older woman aged 50 to 70 years, two teenagers aged 15 to 19, and two children around the ages of 8 to 12 years old. The victims were found in Nelson County in the Woods Mill area around the Rockfish River.”
If you know anyone who went missing in August of 1969 please contact the Virginia Medical Examiner’s Office Coordinator Lara Newell at [email protected].
All the remains have been cremated. This means that comparing DNA will not work. However, if they have names, the office can try to find their medical record, especially the dental ones. They can then compare notes with autopsy reports and the dental notes they made at that time. More details are in the links provided in the post or can be found online.
On the website from NamUs (National Missing and Unidentified Persons System) you can find in the left margin the search options for their massive databases for the missing, the unidentified, and the unclaimed remains. Some case files have photography so a word of caution here is appropriate.
Thank you for remembering the victims of Hurricane Camille.