Bodies left unclaimed, cadavers stacked high in morgues and burial rates tumbling as loved ones cut funeral costs: the crippling recession is even haunting the dead across the United States.
In Los Angeles, the local coroner's office has witnessed an unprecedented spike in the number of corpses unclaimed by families who cannot afford the costs of a burial or cremation.
"The reason we are hearing from the families is the economic downturn," Los Angeles County Coroner's chief investigator Craig Harvey told AFP. "They tell us they don't have the means to afford funerals."
In the past 12 months, the coroner's office, which is responsible for handling bodies from homicides and suspicious deaths, carried out 36 percent more cremations than the previous year, jumping to 712 from 525. At the Los Angeles County morgue meanwhile, the cremation figure rose by 25 percent.
Cremations are usually carried out around one month after death if no-one from the deceased's family comes forward to claim the body. The ashes are then stored for two to three years before being dispersed in a communal grave.
Simply claiming a body from the county costs 200 dollars and can run up to 452 if the deceased has been cremated.
A private cremation can cost up to 1,000 dollars while the average price of a funeral weighs in at around 7,300 dollars, according to the National Funeral Directors Association (NFDA).
While the recession is by no means the first that California has had to weather over the years, Harvey said he has never known previous downturns to impact the workings of the coroner's office and morgues as severely.
"It seems that this crisis has hit a greater number of people," he told AFP.
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Too bad there aren't lava-active volcanoes to toss them into; there are going to be a lot of nasty human corpses.
ReplyDeleteI saw a guy on TV saying you should add large contractor garbage bags and Lye to your survival inventory so you can clean up dead bodies around your house.
Hardcore!
Mapquest - hang a right on 39th and past the dead guy in the blue shirt on the lawn - then hang a left ...
Funeral Home Directors are like Mortgage Bankers who sell rip-off products. When funerals reached $5,000.00 and over it was time for Government Price Controls to be implemented. I am all for families of the deceased being responsible to pay for the "disposal" of the bodies and they should be able to do so, and not have to have a Pharoah's class funeral with all the trimmings to pay for. This gets right in there with the $20,000.00 weddings and $3,000.00 kids birthday parties. It is simply pride-ridden and stupid. Let's respect the deceased, and bury them with respect for less than $1,000.00.
ReplyDeleteA corpse is a corpse. Feed mine to the sharks. Throw me in the cooker. Harvest any parts you want. No big deal. People that are so self-important that they have to be placed in an oak and brass casket and buried - just vanity and nonsense.
ReplyDeleteBurial of a person in the ground came from the early Lunar cults (Moon worshippers; where the Hebrews came from; hence all Hebrew rituals are performed at night) who believed a body must be placed in the 'underworld' - underground - in order to pass into the spiritual realm.
It is just tradition following after mythology anyway. Ignorance. A physical, rotting dead human body in a box - disgusting.
Just a empty container!
ReplyDeleteErrr no burial did not come from early lunar cults. Burial is a natural impulse among man probably dating back 50,000 years. Elephants also bury their dead. I suppose those elephants are a bunch of Hebrew moon cultists that performa satanic rituals under the african night sky at 3 am in the morning , eating goy babies and the like.
ReplyDeleteYou remind me of this 'Christian' i met who was a member of the Aryan Nation that had the most AMAZING version of the bible I ever heard, including that Germans are the true jews...amazing.
Nice strawman, fail.
ReplyDeleteRidiculous. Prisoners get a burial.
ReplyDeleteYou were buried because some folks have an aversion to burning the dead, and right, before man had fire, buried makes sense. In dry places a place that is bone dry and away from where you live.
ReplyDeleteRotting corpses are a source of disease. The smart folks sent their dead down into Davey Jones, if possible. Or burned them, pu.