In April 2020, at the height of the pandemic, the United States installed a emergency morgue with refrigerated trucks on the promenade of Brooklyn with the bodies of coronavirus victims whose families could not be located or could not afford a burial. One year later, about 750 corpses they remain stored in the trucks.
According to the data provided by the forensic office, the authorities cannot yet locate the relatives of at least 230 deceased. The problem is that the state has to wait for family authorizations to be able to order the burial of the deceased.
More than 900 people were buried in 2020 on Hart Island, the largest municipal cemetery in the United States, managed by the Department of Corrections and that for 150 years has received the bodies that no one claims in the Big Apple.
The images of the mass grave with the coffins stacked, taken from the air, caused consternation among New Yorkers, and the mayor, Bill de Blasio, assured that the burials would be temporary.
However, the dilemma of the refrigerated trucks could be solved again with mass burials, according to authorities. Dina Maniotis, deputy executive director of the coroner’s office, recently recalled that All families have the right to request a free burial on Hart Island and some families are confused about what to do.
In that sense, Maniotis said that many of the bodies held at 39th Street Pier could end up buried on Hart Island.
“This has been traumatic. We are working with family members as kindly as we can and persuading them to make their plans.. A lot of them will decide they want to go to Hart Island, which is fine, ”Maniotis said.
Hart Island saw an increase in burials last year, with 2,666 people buried there in 2020 compared to about 1,200 in a typical year. So far in 2021 there have already been another 504 burials.
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