Thread: Unclaimed Bodies Crowd the L.A. County Morgue

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me ... 4532.story

Unclaimed Bodies Crowd the L.A. County Morgue
The lack of refrigerated storage space is forcing staffers to temporarily move corpses into halls.
By Hector Becerra
Times Staff Writer

May 12, 2006

The Los Angeles County morgue is experiencing unprecedented overcrowding this year, prompting officials to stack bodies and to move them out of refrigerated crypts and into hallways for periods of time.

The morgue building is designed to hold 300 to 350 bodies, but at last count 415 bodies were being stored there, according to Craig Harvey, a spokesman for the coroner's office. At one point a few months ago, there were 447 bodies, the highest number of corpses that Harvey has seen in his 18 years with the agency.

"The coroner was never intended to be the mortuary of last resort," Harvey said. "But that's kind of what we've become…. Hallways become a parking lot where bodies are put until we get those we want out."

Population growth, illegal immigration, familial estrangement and poverty may be factors in the increase in the number of bodies, officials said.

"One of the things we've always tried to do is give families back a body," Harvey said. "But when we're looking for families, we find that today we're not always dealing with the Ozzie-and-Harriet close-knit families. Families are often estranged."

Some of the unidentified or unclaimed bodies are probably those of immigrants who came to this country but have no nearby loved ones. Others are homeless or are estranged from their families, officials said.

In some cases, family members cannot afford to pay even for cremation or refuse to pay for the funeral.

"We've had scenarios where a family is interested in the bank account and the estate, and that's it," Harvey said. "They don't care what happens to the body. They won't even take out of the estate to pay for the funeral expenses."

In the 1980s, it was unusual to have more than 250 bodies at the facility. In the 1990s, that number rose to about 300.

In the past, coroner's officials could count on spikes in the number of stored bodies, which were then followed by quick declines, Harvey said.

"That's not happening anymore," Harvey said. "We thought this was just a temporary thing, but it's not going back down. It's staying static."

On Jan. 1, the coroner had 444 stored bodies. Harvey said he had expected that number to drop significantly after the holidays. But eight days later, the number declined by only 25.

Harvey said the most obvious solution was to send bodies more quickly to the county crematorium, which is run by the County-USC Medical Center. Some bodies have been at the morgue for nine months, he said.

"We just have to make the tough call to proceed with disposing the bodies sooner," Harvey said. "If a family ends up coming into the picture, they're going to be faced with claiming a set of [cremated remains] rather than an intact body. But at least they'll have their loved one in some capacity."

Since January, 185 unclaimed bodies have been sent to the Los Angeles County crematorium. An additional 62 will be released by the first week of June. Many of them were cases in which no one came forward to identify the bodies.

County officials want to build an annex to the existing morgue on North Mission Road, which should free up more storage space.

"We're trying to address the storage issue," said Jan Takata, assistant division chief for the county's chief administrative office.

Takata said county officials will ask the Board of Supervisors in June to find funding for a study to build the annex, where functions such as autopsies, which are now performed at the existing facility, will be done.

An aide to county Supervisor Gloria Molina said she supported funding for short-term fixes at the facility last year and supported building an annex to the existing morgue.

"The supervisor supports a new facility for the coroner's office, but that has to be balanced with the myriad other needs of the county," press deputy Roxane Marquez said.

At the morgue, Harvey said, the growing number of bodies means his office has a tougher management job. To retrieve a body in storage, staffers often have to move corpses into hallways. Harvey said this can only be done for relatively short periods of time to prevent bodies from decomposing faster.

"Some will say we need more storage space, and I reject that argument because if you have more storage space, you're just going to store more bodies," Harvey said.

"My position is, rather than store more bodies, let's work on disposing of the bodies sooner and just keep the count down. Our interest in giving bodies back to their families accounts for a lot of them being here longer than we want them to."

Send them to President Fox, or they will have to start pauper graves again...Hey they even threw Mozart into a pauper's grave.

Originally Posted by moosetracks

Send them to President Fox, or they will have to start pauper graves again...Hey they even threw Mozart into a pauper's grave.

Looks like we never stop paying for them! We start off paying for their anchor babies, we pay for them throughout their lives through social service programs, and we pay for them when they die