From reading the article, 10,000 is just one island and they know there are thousands more. A logistic question is, what do you do with 10,000 or 15,000 or 20,000 bodies? Try to visualize that many bodies. They need to be dealt with fairly quickly, so what do you do? How long will it take to gather them? How big a trench does it take to bury that many? Burning would be out of the question I think as it’s difficult to burn an entire body unless you have a really hot fire for a period of time.
That is gruesome to think about but any disaster in this country, such as no power for months, would cause more deaths than that. Remember, November 13 and 14, our country will simulate such a disaster. Are they going to include what to do with a massive number of bodies?
There were between 6000 and 10,000 killed in the Galveston storm of 1900. They first gathered up bodies and took them out to sea and dumped them. When the tide brought them back to the beach, they piled them up and burned them. My grandfather, a 21 year old carpenter, was part of the crew who had to do the dirty work.
Why don't you ask the Japanese? The seemed to figure it out during WWII.