'Overly obese' body starts funeral home fire

WCPO ^ | 04/27/2017 | WCPO Staff

[DFG]

CINCINNATI -- A "freak accident" started an unscheduled fire Wednesday night at the Hillside Chapel Crematory in Cincinnati, owner Don Catchen said.

"My operator was in the process of cremating remains and (the body) was overly obese and apparently it got a little hotter than the unit is supposed to get," Catchen said. "One of the cremation containers that we had close got caught on fire and that's what burnt."

[NonValueAdded]

Now the fat’s in the fire!

[WKUHilltopper]

Fat burns hot. Always has. Shouldn’t be a new revelation.

[posterchild]

Could they not use a band saw and only cremate half at a time?

[dp0622]

If that had happened with my body half of Ohio would be burned to the ground.

[mass55th]

Reminds me of the story of how Henry VIII's body exploded in his coffin, and how supposedly, dogs were present to lick up the mess.

Henry VIII Exploded In His Coffin

[LydiaLong]

And the remains were scheduled to be spread over Nebraska.

[Southside_Chicago_Republican]

I have heard of this happening. Ugh! What a gruesome business.

[Ezekiel]

Catchen said his business at 525 Martin Luther King Drive is "fine"..

You know what they say in real estate: Location Location Location.

[Red Badger]

[HiTech RedNeck]

All those calories had to go somewhere.

[HiTech RedNeck]

Tell them to use an asbestos container in your will.

[B.O. Plenty]

This was a grease fire...

(I couldn't help myself)....but condolences to the family of the deceased person. RIP

[Responsibility2nd]

Also FTA......

The danger of fires when cremating obese bodies isn’t an entirely unknown issue for the funeral service profession: “As you may realize, when a morbidly obese person is cremated, there’s a danger of what can only be called (in layman’s terms) a ‘grease fire,’” according to Caleb Wilde, a licensed professional who runs the blog Confessions of a Funeral Director.

In October 2014, a Virginia facility caught fire while cremating a 500-pound body. Fire investigators there said excessive heat ignited rubber roofing near the crematorium’s smoke stack. Another fire, two years earlier in Austria, left firefighters “covered with a layer of sooty grease.”

[Gen.Blather]

Funeral people say of fat folks, “they bring their own BTU’s to the fire.”

I suppose they could have discreetly carved it into smaller pieces. This is one of those chores I am SO glad somebody else does. Glad to pay for it, thank you.

[Responsibility2nd]

They could always go the "Gilbert Grape" route.

 

[HiTech RedNeck]

This is a situation that Viking funerals were created for, perhaps? Do it way out on the water.

[HiTech RedNeck]

But then they would have to bill for a double (triple, etc.) batch.

[day10]

I can attest. I worked in that industry for a dozen years. This is not uncommon.

[mainestategop]

I heard that he was in a coffin the size of a piano box