Published on : 11/04/2020 – 06:57
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With the increase in mortality in New York from the coronavirus, the city faces a lack of space to store the remains of the victims and has just activated the measures provided for in its plan for pandemics, by digging a mass grave on Hart Island. For 150 years, the island has served as a burial place for the poor, prisoners or people whose bodies are not claimed. This is also where the victims of the Spanish flu and AIDS were buried.
With our correspondent in New York, Carrie Nooten
The image is striking: a first long trench is freshly dug, and we see men in white overalls piling up pine coffins engraved with a name, in two rows and three floors, then covering them again with earth.
The drone that captures the scene is only a few miles from downtown Manhattan, it flies over Hart Island, east of the Bronx. The island is famous for sheltering the cemetery of the indigent of the megalopolis for 150 years. It is also intended to receive pandemic victims flu, in the city’s emergency plan created ten years ago.
25 bodies buried per day
It is only accessible by boat. Thus, two days ago, a first barge carrying a refrigerated trailer landed on the island. The city hired workers to dig the trench with backhoes. Usually 25 bodies are buried per week, by prisoners from nearby Rikers Prison: New Yorkers whose bodies have not been claimed by relatives or prisoners.
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These days, 25 bodies are buried there every day, five days a week. The city has not specified whether they were only victims of the Covid-19. One thing is certain, they were sent there to unclog the city’s morgues, which receive twice as many remains than normal. Families who so desire should be able to claim the coffins of their loved ones within 15 days to organize private burials.
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