What you should know
- The temporary morgue near a dock in an industrial part of Brooklyn is off the minds of many as the city celebrates the removal of restrictions following improvements in numbers related to the pandemic.
- The facility, which the city plans to close in late summer, is a reminder of the loss, turmoil and heartbreaking results that the virus brought to one of its deadliest hotspots in the US.
- Some New Yorkers worry that hundreds of people in the morgue are still waiting to be buried.
—
NEW YORK – On a sunny morning last month, a dozen mourners gathered by a freshly dug grave to bury four people who were thrown into limbo as New York City grappled with COVID-19.
Each was among the hundreds of people whose bodies have remained in a temporary morgue that was installed at the height of the coronavirus crisis in the city last year and where about 200 bodies remain, not all of them victims of the virus.
The fenced-in temporary morgue on a pier in an industrial part of Brooklyn is out of sight and mind for many as the city celebrates improvements in the battle against COVID-19 by removing restrictions and even holding fireworks. But the facility, which the city plans to close in late summer, is a reminder of the loss, turmoil and heartbreaking results that the virus brought to one of its deadliest hotspots in the US.
James Brown, George Davis, Diane Quince and Charles Varga died of various causes between three and nine months before their burial in mid-June in Staten Island’s airy Ocean View Cemetery. Officials found no closest relatives.
“But we know they lived, not without friends, but with friends and family,” Edwina Frances Martin, a Staten Island public property manager, told a handful of Brown friends and volunteers who attend such funerals. “Because now everyone is part of our family. And we are part of them. “
Some New Yorkers worry that hundreds of people in the morgue are still waiting to be buried.
“Still these bodies wait – why?” Asks Kiki Valentine, a Brooklyn minister and funeral services attendant. He wrote to officials seeking an explanation and proposing steps he thinks might help, such as posting public obituaries of the deceased.
Only virus deaths peaked at 800 a day citywide at one point in April 2020 (deaths from all causes generally average 150) and funeral homes, cemeteries and hospital morgues overwhelmed. The temporary morgue was established that month to give families more time to organize funerals after the city shortened its deadline to save the remains before burying them in a public cemetery on remote Hart Island. There is no rule about how long bodies can remain in the temporary facility.
“There were too many deaths for the system to handle,” recalls Amy Koplow, executive director of the Hebrew Free Burial Association, which is burying some Jews who were in the temporary morgue.
“We feel very good to be able to bury these people who have been unburied and in limbo for so long,” he said.
Still, Koplow feels the medical examiner’s office went to great lengths in a maelstrom. Many cases require a considerable search of relatives, a will or other indications of the wishes of the deceased, he noted.
As the medical examiner’s office prepares to close the temporary facility, the agency has stopped taking the recently deceased there, and investigators are working to contact family members and determine final arrangements for the roughly 200 whose remains remain. spokesman Mark Desire said by email last week.
That’s less than 750 when the agency informed City Council members in early May, saying that investigators had found relatives in most cases, but were awaiting their decisions or had stopped hearing from them.
Desire did not respond to questions about where the bodies removed from the facility were taken, why the temporary morgue remained in use after the 2020 increase declined, or how many of the deceased are victims of the virus.
Brooklyn Borough President and aspiring mayor Eric Adams has asked the City Council to ensure that every effort is made to reach out to the families of the deceased and assist with requests for government-paid funeral reimbursement. said spokesman Ryan Lynch. (The city can provide up to $ 1,700 and a specific federal program for COVID-19 deaths allows up to $ 9,000. Burial on Hart Island is free.)
Meanwhile, Rabbi Regina Sandler-Phillips, who has organized volunteers to hold vigils at home for the dead around the world, especially the unclaimed and unnamed, periodically ventures to a discreet location near the temporary morgue. He will give testimony “of what is not seen and of those who are not named,” he says.
The pain surrounding the creation and continued use of the facility “highlights the difficulties of how we honor the dead,” he says.
The group at the Ocean View Cemetery on June 17 was also there to witness.
“We don’t want them to go to their final resting place alone,” said Diane Kramer, a volunteer for a charity called Foundation for DignitY. He works with Martin’s office, which arranged the burial in the private cemetery.
Little information could be confirmed about Davis, who was 76, and Fifteen, 62.
Varga, 81, had a background in information science and business consulting, spoke four languages and worked in recent years on a documentary about homelessness, according to his social media profiles.
He was in poor health, said her friend Sandra Andrews, who said he was separated from relatives but became a father figure to her after they met in 2010. She said she tried to find out what happened to him after was hospitalized in February, but learned of his death on February 2 only from The Associated Press.
“I didn’t get a chance to properly say goodbye to him,” he said by email.
Brown, 51, was a taxi driver and dispatcher on and off for 30 years, according to his co-worker Desereeanne Fisher and his boss Anton Kumar.
They said Brown was a hard worker and sometimes even slept in the office, where co-workers still have their beloved bowling ball.
He told friends that he had been disconnected from his family since childhood, but that he was “a friend to everyone,” Fisher said, wiping away tears. “Whatever you needed, he would do it for you.”
Brown fell and hit his head in a store on March 2 and was found dead in his truck minutes later, dead from a blood clot, Fisher said. He said his colleagues wanted to organize and participate in a funeral, but they ran into obstacles because they were not related.
“There has been no closure” since his death, she said, relieved to learn that she had finally been buried in shady ground, with a plaque dedicated by her friends.
“He might not have had a family,” she said, “but he had a lot of people who loved him.”
Associated Press journalist Tom Hays contributed to this report.
– .
