Too broke to bury the dead

At 1300 E. Warren St., you can smell the plight of Detroit.

Inside the Wayne County morgue in midtown Detroit, 67 bodies are piled up, unclaimed, in the freezing temperatures. Neither the families nor the county can afford to bury the corpses. So they stack up inside the freezer.

Albert Samuels, chief investigator for the morgue, said he has never seen anything like it during his 13 years on the job. "Some people don't come forward even though they know the people are here," said the former Detroit cop. "They don't have the money."

money.cnn.com...

What a sad state we are in here in America. The government can find billions of dollars to bailout the rich banksters but they can't figure out a way to get a few thousand dollars to Detriot so they can bury their dead.

The number of unclaimed corpses at the Wayne County morgue is at a record high, having tripled since 2000. The reason for the pile-up is twofold: One, unemployment in the area is approaching 28%, and many people, like the Vickers, can't afford last rites; two, the county's $21,000 annual budget to bury unclaimed bodies ran out in June.

So a measly $21k ran out and they can't find a way to fund this? What a shame.

But this messy reality is shielded behind the Wayne County morgue's perfectly trimmed hedges and pristine brick walls.

I guess they still have the money to pay the landscaper. Our priorities are just out of wack.

The Los Angeles coroner's office said it, too, has seen an increase in the number of bodies abandoned.

This is happening in other cities as well, not just Detriot. When you look at the big picture and billions of dollars that have been handed out to bailout the rich I find it unacceptable that the poor are being ignored. We are only talking about thousands of dollars to help people out with burying their loved ones.

Oh, that's awful.

So what do you do with a surplus of dead bodies? Do they line the hallways of the morgue? Do they put them outside to decay?

I would think that would get stinky fast.

On a disturbing and only slighly related note, for some reason Soylent Green popped into my mind.

Ah, 'home'. I have since moved, thankfully. Poor old Detroit, just waiting to be taken out of its misery. Not only is this recession tough, but it is also the last nail in the coffin for the US industrial base so that region will not recover quite as fast as the rest of the nation.

Great thread, and hopefully it will help clear up the real state of the economy to those that think we are out of the woods just because the DOW is in the middle of the 'W'.

reply to post by Morbo the Annihilator


"What do you do with a surplus of dead bodies?"

Where are all those FEMA coffins?

I find this amazing because 3rd world countries have no problem burying their dead. I guess greed is so pervasive that people have forgotten common sense stuff like digging a damn hole.

[edit on 1-10-2009 by cloakndagger]

reply to post by cloakndagger


It should be cheaper to burn them. They need a large corporation to tackle this issue.

Dr. Death's House of Flames.

"We're sending the high cost of cremation down to hell."

Originally posted by cloakndagger
I find this amazing because 3rd world countries have no problem burying their dead. I guess greed is so pervasive that people have forgotten common sense stuff like digging a damn hole.

[edit on 1-10-2009 by cloakndagger]

I am thinking the same thing. How much does it cost to put a body in a pine box and dig a hole? I just can't believe the priorities in the country. Billions for banksters but no help for the regular people.

Bureaucratic nonsense at its finest.

Sitting around scratching their behinds, running around in circles, wringing of the hands, while asking 'What do we do!?!'

What a shame. Finances break down and we cannot rely on common sense like:

Step 1: Dig hole.
Step 2: Place body in hole.
Step 3: Place dirt over hole.

Like someone said in the other thread, cavemen could bury their dead for crying out loud. It's like a credit card machine breaking down and someone asking, 'Cash? What's cash?'

:shk:

The average cost of a funeral, burial is about $10,000 to $12,000. My father passed 2 years ago, and my mother back in 2001. Their funerals, being buried, werre about $13,000 each. The headstone was a few grand! for a basic one. Being cremated is the cheapest way, or even better, as i joke for time to time....im gunna go keel over in some lonely outsourced corn field ro piece of woods, to stay free of the expenses. lol
On an interesting note..a freind at work was reading about embalming...i had no idea, when they burry you, they fill the inside of the grave with concrete, rather, they lace the walls with it, pump you full of formaldyayde. HE says the body can stay well perseved for a good 4 or 5 years at least! why would science wanan rpeserve the dead? i mean, the only good thing formaldyahide is good for, is making sure you look good at the wake, nothiing more. its highly toxic stuff...i wonder how much formaldyahide has leaked into our rivers and lakes from surrounding graveyards?
years ago, thier awas a problem found in one of our lcoal cemetarys...the bodies, well over 40 of them, had shifted and moved* the cause, was found to be from a small river on the cemetarys boarder. over decades, 40 coffins* had moved all over the cemetary! im sure formadyahyde got out and intot he water..