Posted on 02/09/2021 1:19:21 PM PST by Roman_War_Criminal
When New York City was overwhelmed with coronavirus deaths last year, Casey Stone from Bay Area Mortuary was heartbroken by the news stories about “stacking bodies in trailers.”
So when the surge of deaths started hitting the Bay Area in recent weeks and three refrigerated trailers were brought into their mortuary parking lot in San Jose, she started a new ritual.
Every morning, she climbs into the temporary morgues with a bucket full of flowers, gently tucks in the white sheets around as many as 60 perished people on bunk bed-style racks and lays a fresh flower on top.
“We try to offer a little dignity and respect when they go from one sad place to another,” said Stone, the operations manager for the family-owned mortuary.
After the holiday surges, the number of new COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations are declining, but the deaths — the pandemic’s lagging indicator — are enduring “an extraordinary explosion,” as one funeral home operator puts it.
California has tallied more than 43,000 deaths so far, with nearly 15,000 of those coming in January, and is on pace to surpass New York, which leads the nation with more than 44,000 deaths, within a week. And the “last responders” are struggling to keep up.
Crematories are operating on double shifts — and some would run three, one operator said, if they had enough trained workers. Embalmers are working 7 days a week. Across the Bay Area, some families have to wait a week or even two to set up an initial meeting with a funeral home.
Last week’s storms added more misery. With funeral services required to be outdoors, families endured buffeting winds and rain in two-sided pop-up tents as they tried to say goodbye.
“Every day we’re picking families off the floor, bawling, saying they couldn’t be with their loved ones when they died and we say, ‘Sorry, you can’t have your service inside,’” Stone said. “We do this every day, but still, I don’t have enough waterproof mascara. I cry right with them.”
If the Bay Area funeral industry has it tough, Los Angeles is worse. With 40 percent of all statewide coronavirus deaths, grieving families there often wait a month or more for a funeral service.
Los Angeles County lifted air quality regulations in January when it suspended limits on the number of cremations allowed each month. Southern California has such a backlog that a Fresno funeral home, for instance, is trucking bodies to the Evergreen Cemetery in Oakland for cremation.
“We can’t keep up with the cremations down there,” said Buck Kamphausen, who runs a string of 15 funeral homes, crematories and cemeteries across California. “We’ve doubled all the capacity — plus — at our facilities. We’ve had to add backup generators and racks to carry them. All we’re doing is meeting the demand.”
In recent weeks, transport trucks have been making two trips a day between the Neptune Society facility that Kamphausen runs in San Jose to the Evergreen crematorium in Oakland.
“One day they called me and said we just got 50 bodies to pick up today,” he said of the Neptune facility. “We have a holding facility for 70 bodies and we fill that up instantly.”
The morgue at Skyview Memorial Lawn in Vallejo is nearly full, he said, so “we just opened another refrigerated unit so we can hold more bodies.”
Rules requiring bodies from nursing homes be quickly transferred — including a surfeit of COVID cases among them — and death certificates that wait days for the signatures of exhausted doctors, all add to the backups. With little room to hold bodies that aren’t quickly destined for cremation or burial, many mortuaries won’t accept bodies from hospitals without signed death certificates, which adds to more strain on hospital employees scrambling to find options.
Harry Greer, who followed his father into the East Bay mortuary business, said he’s considered the “secondary backup” for Alameda Hospital when its morgue overflows. With winter flus and pneumonia, the funeral business is usually busy this time of year. But now, he said, about half the deaths coming to his mortuary are from COVID.
“We’re a smaller funeral home, but still, this is my 50th year in the funeral business and I’ve never experienced anything quite like this,” said Greer, who now owns Alameda Funeral and Cremation Services.
Large funeral homes and cemeteries are also feeling the strain At Chapel of the Chimes in Piedmont, which has a larger sister facility in Hayward, General Manager Cary Boisvert said that although the Bay Area hasn’t been hit as hard as Los Angeles, “we certainly have been keeping our heads just above the waterline.”
“We’re there for at least 12 hours a day, or longer,” he said. “People come in on their days off. People are doing their level best to help.”
The Hayward Chapel of the Chimes has brought in an extra two refrigerated trucks that Boisvert said he also uses.
Grieving families are often forced to wait at least six days to get an initial Zoom meeting, he said, which creates “a very unnatural suspension state. It’s hard to move forward.”
Although he hasn’t refused services to anyone yet, “I could see it happening if we were as unfortunate as Southern California.”
In San Jose, Bay Area Mortuary’s three parking lot trailers hold bodies for the Santa Clara County coroner and a number of local hospitals. Most mornings, Stone stops at the florist on her way to work to pick up red, pink and yellow roses and daisies. She suits up in a protective suit and mask before she enters the refrigerated trailers and treats each body as though it were a relative.
Recently, as she was climbing into one with an armful of flowers, a driver dropping off a deceased person asked why she takes the time each day to walk through the chilly coolers lined with double-decker built-in-racks.
“Because this is somebody’s mother,” she said she told the driver.
Last week, the driver’s grandfather-in-law died and he told her the body would be heading to Bay Area Mortuary.
“Can you make sure you put a flower on him?” she said the driver asked her, adding, “Now I get it.” More terrible news about this Californication on Mercury News.
It's the Bay Area. I'd say it's due to a different demographic; one used to spreading and catching other bugs.
Globalism’s sinister plan is working well.
LOL, could they use more emotional language?...
Open borders was my first thought.
FAKE NEWS
What a load.
They make stuff up and sensationalize.
Have we already forgotten what a totally bogus optic all these refrigerated trucks were in New York last year? Nobody ever followed through on just what it meant. It is part and parcel of the illusion created that, even if these trucks were filled with dead bodies, they would be dead bodies “certified” as being dead “because” of Covid, not “because” of a hundred other things. They are, once again, “certifiably” “Covid deaths” ONLY because a nose swab Covid test was given and it came up “positive”-—I myself and my wife and daughter all tested positive in the past two months (me, after testing “negative” on Sept. 23.We are all still very much alive, all without symptoms then and now beyond those of a cold. WHAT happened, we may ask, to the ACTUAL predicatable “death rate” OUTSIDE those called “Covid deaths”. Where are the numbers for those, which might put the lie to the Covid numbers. And it’s those numbers and the gruesomely dishonest narratives and optics of trucks being loaded with dead Covid bodies, that give the lie to this ongoing lie. And I think , whatever else could be said about illegal border crossers, it’s beside the point to drag them into it, whether they’re Covid-positive or not. It just serves to bolster the whole Covid lie. I can see not everyone agrees with me.
new COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations are declining, but the deaths — the pandemic’s lagging indicator — are enduring “an extraordinary explosion,”
________________________________
Along with Biden’s inauguration came new WHO criteria for determining WuFlu cases. Now need 2 positive tests plus visible symptoms to be counted as a case.
Number of properly classified deaths is the only true indicator.
Deaths were over-reported during President Trump’s administration and now cases look to be under-reported since Biden’s inauguration.
He was probably being sarcastic. That’s the way I took it.
Well, no need for the name-calling, and JimRob HAS asked us to keep it civil.
However - I agree. I don’t understand why we ALL don’t pull together, especially here at FR.
I get called out on Wisconsin politics once in a while, because, as you know, I AM her biggest Cheerleader! :)
There’s seriously not a thing I can do about Dane and Milwaukee counties, which RUIN life in Wisconsin for so many of the rest of her Hard-working, Gun-toting, God-Fearing, Generous, Kind and Wonderful Citizens.
Again, let’s try to stick together. Those that don’t want to play with us to Make America Great Again, or SLOW the spread of Socialism/Communism, can take their ball and go home.
I don’t know what to make of such ‘reports’ these days. If this were common there’d be a lot more solid evidence (pictures etc.) than what we see. Maybe the first question is, how many did you get per day prior to COVID? And, are these all COVID?
I know people that work at hospitals, they’re telling me they’re not overwhelmed at all.
It all just seems to be part of the fear mongering.
Yes, I’m sure he was literally hoping for the death of every single person in CA.
It wasn’t a tongue in cheek comment about liberalism in CA...
Don’t shoot the messenger!
Months ago there was an article about a county in Texas that was using refrigerated truck(s) at the morgue. Well, as it turns out the morgue had room for 2 and the county had 3 deaths. Sigh.
Why are there not thousands upon thousands of dead homeless people?
Having read another of Griffin’s replies I no longer think he was being sarcastic with that first one. All part of the freerepublic “glorious mosaic”.
open borders might be a contributing factor, but think about the states with the most severe lockdowns during covid ??
California and NY head the list, what has the result been ??
I believe lockdowns lower people’s immune system by keeping them inside, then when lockdowns end and people start venturing out again, the virus comes roaring back with devastating effects. IMO, that’s what we are seeing now.....
The other states that have locked everyone down will go the same way, look at Europe in the coming weeks and see what happens their lockdowns have been even more severe....
Besides, I thought we were told Januaty 20 resolved that issue. You know, the thing. C’mon man.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.