Cardboard Coffins and Drive-thru Funerals
Wells Funeral Services
While the numbers of coronavirus deaths has begun to slow, funeral homes and crematoriums are struggling to work through the enormous backlog of New York’s 16,000 dead.
The city has seen more than 16,400 deaths in two months, tolls not recorded since the last deadly ‘flu pandemic of 1918. Meanwhile, the US as a whole is fast approaching the grim milestone of 100,000 deaths, the highest national tally of any country.
At the height of the city's outbreak in April, a New Yorker was dying almost every two minutes - more than 800 per day, or four times the city’s normal death rate.
Many more families are now opting for cremations in the hopes of holding memorials for loved ones later when restrictions on funeral gatherings are lifted. Green-Wood Crematorium has been overwhelmed with requests. Pre-Covid, they would carry out around 65 cremations a week, now they are exceeding 150. “And that’s with a cap,” their spokesperson said. “Without it we’d probably be doing 300-400, based on the demand.”
The crematorium’s operators are working 16-hour days, seven days a week to keep on top of the load, which does not yet appear to be easing. City authorities even suspended air quality rules to allow crematories to burn round the clock.
One operator describes the work as “crushing” and “exhausting”. He now finds himself hoping for cardboard coffins, which burn much quicker than lacquered wooden ones - saving much-needed time. He dons a hazmat suit, goggles and gloves for his work. He sanitises everything after each casket is sent to the furnace. He cannot afford to take any risks with an asthmatic nine-month-old daughter at home. Strict Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) laws in the US, which protects patients’ privacy, mean the crematorium is not officially allowed to be told which patients died of coronavirus. “The funeral directors come in with the caskets and just say ‘it’s not in the papers, but just be careful with these ones’ and they point to suspected Covid deaths on the list. It’s a really crazy system.”
Source: The Daily Telegraph