Coroners and medical examiners in Washington could see a backlog of bodies soon.
Not directly because the coronavirus has killed hundreds in the state, but because they anticipate the tens of thousands of people who recently lost their jobs may suddenly be dealing with a funeral they cannot afford.
Nearly 485,000 people have lost their jobs in Washington since the beginning of March. Tim Davidson, president of the Washington Association of Coroners and Medical Examiners, said he and his peers expect to see more cases where people don’t claim a body because they can’t pay a funeral home for burial or cremation.
Two newly rented refrigerated units sit outside the Clark County Medical Examiner's Office. The agency said it is planning for an uptick in unclaimed bodies due to economic concerns.
Troy Brynelson / OPB
“Even though you’ve got people that care for their loved ones, if they’re out of work and they’ve got to put food on the table for their kids, or look at trying to get somebody cremated or buried, what has to come first?” he asked.
Coroners’ and medical examiners’ main duty is to determine cause of death. But under Washington law, they are also obligated to hold a body for up to three months if that person is not claimed.
There’s a wide range of reasons why a person may not immediately claim a dead relative. For example, it may take days to travel across the country and retrieve remains, or a person dies and their only next of kin is an elderly person with a medical condition that makes retrieval impossible.
Sometimes relatives can’t pay for a funeral, said Davidson, who is the coroner for Cowlitz County. The remains then fall to his office, which eventually pays funeral homes to cremate bodies.
“We get those calls normally. ‘I’m on welfare. I’m on unemployment. I can’t afford grandma or grandpa’s burial,’” Davidson said.
After 5,700 people in Cowlitz County lost their jobs in the last month, Davidson said he expects to pay for more cremations. “The respective counties are going to have to figure out the expenditure and how they take care of that.”
In Clark County, where close to 25,000 people have lost jobs, the medical examiner has been renting two 40-foot refrigerators, shaped like shipping containers, for about $1,000 a month.
The move adds needed storage, said county Operations Manager Nikki Costa, which has been a problem even when the economy is strong. Their facility has storage for 18 bodies. The county also bought it two decades ago when it had almost 200,000 fewer residents.
“We hope that it will give families time in which to make arrangements and recognize that there’s an economic hardship being suffered by a large number of people that live in Clark County,” Costa said.
A sign hangs outside two new refrigerated units rented by the Clark County Medical Examiner's Office. The agency said it is planning for an uptick in unclaimed bodies due to economic concerns.
Troy Brynelson / OPB
According to Costa, about 600 deaths in Clark County needed to be transported and stored by the medical examiner last year — around 11 new bodies every week. That does not include unclaimed remains.
Clark County is not over its capacity at the county morgue, yet. Last week, storage was nearly filled, but this week there was more space. That number can also rise any moment.
“You can have a car crash with four passengers, all of them are fatalities … you go from no cases today to four tomorrow,” Costa said. “There’s an ebb and flow to our work that is not predictable.”
Costa said the county expects to keep the refrigerated units for the foreseeable future, saying the economic recovery “may be a really long road.” The freezers could allow Clark County to hold at least twice as many bodies.
Related: Funeral Homes Overwhelmed With COVID-19 Cases
Costa and Davidson did not say that costs of funeral services have played a role.
Brad Carlson, whose family has owned Evergreen Memorial Center in Vancouver since 1968, said their rates have not changed in recent years. He added that during the Great Recession, he did not see more people eschewing funerals and cremations.
Instead, Carlson said, people typically opt for lower priced services.
“Maybe instead of a casketed burial, they might choose cremation,” he said. “That same thing might be true now where there might be less spending.”
Still, Davidson said the association is talking with state officials to try and relax the law requiring they hold unclaimed remains for three months.
“We need to have that ability where we can move them forward quickly, so we don’t have bodies stacking up for 90 days,” he said. “That’s being looked at it, but there’s nothing agreed upon yet.”