MIKE MUDGE will not be raising his spirits at the Mardi Gras celebrations in New Orleans today. He is too busy laying the dead back to rest.

For six months, the parish councilman and former detective has been part of an extraordinary effort to recover, identify and re-inter human remains wrenched from more than 1,200 graves in Louisiana and Mississippi during Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

The flood washed the coffins — some still in their concrete tombs — up to 33 miles from their burial spots, depositing them in trees, fields and swamps, and in many cases spilling their contents. Some drifted the entire width of the Mississippi; others were washed out to sea. The operation to gather them up has emerged as the largest of its kind in US history and has been conducted away from the publicity that accompanied the search for those killed by the storms.

“These hurricanes don’t discriminate against anybody — black, white, living, dead,” said Mr Mudge, who led the effort to recover the contents of around 300 coffins dislodged from cemeteries in Plaquemines parish, south of New Orleans, where the water rose as high as 20ft. He added: “Sometimes it’d be a leg bone here, a jaw bone there. If this was my Mama or Daddy scattered out here, I would be grateful for someone to pick them up and put them back at peace. You can’t just give somebody a brown paper bag of bones and say: ‘Here’s Junior’.”

The recovery has been assisted by the Disaster Mortuary Operational Rescue Team, a force of forensic experts and undertakers mustered after Katrina struck. They have identified about one third of the disinterred using clues from historical notes, dental records, or items found in coffins. One woman’s skeleton was found with a photograph of her grandchildren that bore the words “world’s best grandma”.

“I found one who must have been a hell of a guy because he’d been buried with three quarts of Budweiser,” said Mr Mudge. After drifting in water and nestling in mud for weeks, some coffins and bodybags contained an indiscernible sludge.

A local family is paying for Plaquemines cemetery to be rebuilt and the tombs to be screwed to the ground.

In New Orleans, Mardi Gras resumes today after a three-day break. Mr Mudge is as interested in joining in as he was in accepting an invitation to have dinner with President Bush when he visited his parish in October. “The White House said, ‘Are you coming?’ and I said, ‘Look, I’ve got a coffin on the back of my truck, I’ve got two urns of ashes on my back seat and I’m just going to pick up two more. Tell the President we had a hurricane here — and we’re still treading water.”

Times Recommends

• It’s only Brits who don’t appreciate me, says Blair
• Party’s over for Greek graspers
• White House tightens security for Xmas marathon