Dozens Of Rotting Corpses Found In Unrefrigerated U-Hauls Outside Brooklyn Funeral Home

I don’t think it failed. (Not doubting you, OP, but them.)

I think they took on far too many bodies and had nowhere to put them.

That was my first thought as well R1. If they took on more bodies than their facility could handle, leading to this debacle, then someone there needs to be in jail.

Quite frankly, I believe a law should have already been passed that requires all people who can't be embalmed and buried within 3 days of death should have to be cremated. COVID-19 has created another health crisis in some cities. Besides the disease itself it has caused things like this happening in the funeral business. Many funeral homes in large cities simply can't keep up with the demand.

I wonder why the funeral home did not know it had failed and it was neighbors who had called the police.

Bring them to the Trump Tower where they belong.

R4 Yes, start piling up bodies like cord wood in front of that building.

How disrespectful.

At least if you’re going to pile them up, make fake body bags or coffins, not real people, most of whom in New York would want nothing to do with that shithole of a tower.

The funk of 40 thousand seconds.

The crematories are very backed up as well, r2. The Brooklyn funeral home my niece works at is a bit overwhelmed too. She said that they ran out of refrigerated space and were storing where they could. She said that they were just turning up the air conditioning in these rooms. This is is second hand info so I don't know if she was kidding. I'll be speaking to her tomorrow to find out more.

[quote]U-Haul trucks

Wonder if they'll get their deposit back.

It's like looking into the soul of the Trump administration.

[quote] Wonder if they'll get their deposit back.

Oh hell to the no!

I ain’t cleaning that stank.

That's a terrible news for their next of kin.

So what do the authorities do about it? Whisk them to some municipal morgue? If there’s a better place to put them, in sure they would. But it sounds as though there isn’t.

What now?

r11 I bet you anything those trucks would've been aired out for a few days after they came in, and be put right back in service, crawling with coronavirus all over them.

Not under my watch!

Or are you sayin I don’t do a good job?

Rhonda, we know you go out back and smoke newports all afternoon, you don't clean shit!

From video posted in another thread we can see how the dead are transported, in sealed body bags. Those bags are strong and unless ripped open (you can see a worker with a very large knife cutting bags open to drain corpse water before cremation), should contain fluids draining from body.

This sounds like a funeral home who either got greedy or had best intentions but simply was overwhelmed and couldn't embalm bodies and get them buried fast enough.

Anyone who has had to deal with final arrangements knows often funeral directors are reluctant to give money back so you can take your "business elsewhere" so to speak. They've got you on the hook for those final arrangements and that is that.

Families of those poor souls were probably strung along about some future date for funeral because place was overwhelmed. But likely believed their loved one's body was stored properly (refrigerated), awaiting embalming/preparation.

Bet you it was a black owned funeral home . That seems to be a thing with them. Weve had no less than 3 cases of the exact same issue here in my city long before covid. One had over 33 piled up in a back room.

R18

Damn, that was good! Can you give some insight into Friday's Powerball numbers?

Sad thing is what some African-Americans do to their own people. Family probably thought it was a good thing giving business to a locally owned black company, and this is what it got them.

As stated previously, Andrew T. Cleckley likely took on far more than he could handle and just warehoused bodies until he could sort things out like so much meat.

[quote] Rhonda, we know you go out back and smoke newports all afternoon, you don't clean shit!

Oh no this muthafucka di’int!

[quote]Bet you it was a black owned funeral home .

Gurl you know it was us. I was the one who called in the tip, these fools were holding up my Brooklyn bag! A bitch got services to preside over and bills to pay.

Rhonda, I saw your ass outside smoking newports too, get to work hussy!

Yes’m.

Such a waste.

I’m just curious what their plan was when putting bodies in unrefrigerated trucks?

Thinking everyone in nyc will need to be cremated until we have space for holding the bodies. Rotting in a UHaul seems much less dignified than being incinerated imho.

The article said fluids were draining from the corpses. If those bodily fluids drained onto the wood floor boards of those trucks there is probably be no way to ever rid those trucks of the stench without replacing the wood. If you've never smelled a rotting corpse before you have no idea how vile a smell it is.

I know this goes against religious and legal standards but they're just bodies and should be mass buried.

I’d like to hear the other side of the story.

Not that the funeral home is innocent, but it’s a fucking pandemic. People are being buried in stacks on Ward’s Island. Where are the bodies supposed to go if the families don’t want them cremated or buried on Ward’s Island?

Nothing short of this is what I want to see when they have to drag that fat fucker out of the White House.

R26 sees the real issue here — getting pesky stains from reefer trucks!

R28

Private funeral directors do not take possession of bodies in NYS unless a family member or someone has hired them for "final arrangements". This funeral home was hired by person or persons to conduct normal funeral arrangements.

Another thing; there hasn't been burials on Ward's Island in ages. NYC's pauper cemetery is on Hart Island.

"The owner, Andrew T. Cleckley, said in an interview on Thursday that, like other funeral directors in New York, he had been overwhelmed by the relentless tide of bodies during the pandemic. Mr. Cleckley said he had used the trucks for overflow storage, but only after he had filled his chapel with more than 100 corpses."

Again Mr. Cleckley is in over his head; he saw money to be made but obviously didn't think things through in terms of how his small family run funeral home was going to "process" > one hundred corpses.

IIRC NYS laws do not require embalming of a corpse. However certain funeral directors or situations will such as if there is to be a prolonged period after death before burial or cremation. This and or if there is to be an open casket at wake/funeral, prolonged wake period, etc....

Few funeral homes in NYS have refrigeration for corpses. They collect deceased, clean, embalm (if wanted/needed), and otherwise prepare body for funeral, then burial or cremation.

From above linked NYT article:

Mr. Cleckley opened his funeral home in 2015 with his wife, Alva Stuart, and initially built a business serving other local morticians by transporting bodies to them from locations where people had died. But in 2017, he said, he started offering a full line of services, like embalming and cremation, to his partners.

Currently, he said, five other funeral homes use his storefront space, which, he said, caused him to be overwhelmed as deaths in New York reached a peak this month. Each of the other homes, he said, were in charge of as many as 30 or 40 bodies.

A website run by the state’s Department of Health listed Mr. Cleckley as a fully licensed funeral director. But the most recent certificate of operation for the address of his business, filed with the city’s Department of Buildings, mentions nothing about a funeral parlor. It said the first floor of his establishment, at 2037A Utica Avenue, was used for “automobile retail” and for “the manufacturing of machinery.”

Mike Lanotte, the president of the New York Funeral Directors Association, said Mr. Cleckley was not a member of the organization.

Mr. Cleckley said that more families have called him in April asking for his help than in an all of last year and acknowledged that he had taken on more work that he could handle.

“We’re all trying to help our clients,” he said, “but we’re jammed up.”

/quote

Yada yada yada. We're Opening American Again! Can't wait for the COVID Sales at Macy's! Some thing sexy for the beach. Haircut and massage tomorrow! Need some gym time, STAT!

My favorite funeral director has a take on what’s happening in nyc with funeral directors right now. She says most are turning people away and many aren’t even doing those video viewings anymore.

By the way, she briefly discusses a (White) funeral director in Harlem whose lesbianism can basically be seen from space.

[quote] Can't wait for the COVID Sales at Macy's!

Ooooh, do you think they’ll have sheets?

How’s Fun Home handling all the bodies?

This country is turning into a shithole.

The U-Haul company is now pissed at the funeral home.

How quaint.

Turning into or already is? @R37

R31, thanks for the informative comments. I totally spaced the Ward’s vs. Hart.

So the funeral home was greedy and bit off more than it could chew.

Most funeral homes are heavily subsidized by the casket companies. They need to be held to some account for this, in my opinion.

It's always about the money when it comes to the dead in USA.

"A Brooklyn woman says that weeks ago she paid a funeral home $15,000 to handle her mother’s final arrangements — and now wonders if she was one of the rotting corpses police found in unrefrigerated U-Haul trucks."

Multiply $15k times at least 100 and you get a tidy sum for an operating out of a garage funeral home.

[quote]It's always about the money when it comes to ANYTHING in USA.

In 1963 Jessica Mitford (one of the fabulous Mitford sisters) nailed things with her expose book "The American Way Of Death". Book laid out how funeral directors prey upon the living to benefit financially from their grief over their deceased. Nothing much has changed in decades that have followed.

Various state and federal laws have sought to reign in worse of abuses regarding final arrangements, but there still are four thousand ways from Sunday for funeral directors to still make their money, and they do.....

In piece above about California's unclaimed dead we saw one deceased despite having made (and paid for) extensive pre-arrangements for his embalming and burial he ends up "near" but not with his family. Why? Well it's "nobody's fault" starts cemetery director, but due to poor record keeping someone else is buried in that plot (and no one is exactly sure who it is), so best cemetery can do is "move on" by burying the recently deceased close as they can get to his family and plot he paid to have.

That sort of shit happens all the time; family or executors of estate or whoever show up with papers indicating all final arrangements were made and paid for in advance. Then funeral home or cemetery starts with "we cannot honor this" or "we need another $$$ for that..."

R43

Actually many funeral homes in USA are now part of large national companies such as Service Corporation International. Wherever you see "Dignity" in relation to funeral industry it means the place is likely owned by SCI. Many local once private family owned funeral homes have been gobbled up by these large North American companies that cover USA, Canada and Puerto Rico....

If you think funeral directors taking on more than they can handle then storing the overflow like so much excess not refrigerated meat is something new, think again.....

R26 I remember an old episode of Mythbusters where they were testing the myth that if a dead body were left to rot in a car, the smell would be practically permanent.

They put a pig carcass in a car and left it there for a month.

Afterwards, as part of the experiment they attempted to completely get rid of the smell. They ended up stripping the car down to bare metal and the odor STILL lingered.

The trucks are probably going to have to be crushed and recycled, or completely disassembled and sold for spare parts.

Once corpse water and other foul matter from a dead animal or fish gets into something it is nearly impossible to get rid of it totally. This is one reason cadaver dogs (and some other animals) can find remains of deceased things months or years after they've mostly decomposed.

People who've used a motor vehicle to move a dead body, or dug one up from a hiding place often try scrubbing things down, but still a cadaver dog picks up the scent.

If you contain a body in a well sealed container then things are different. Modern caskets along with grave liners do a pretty good job of containing things even when bodies aren't embalmed. Prior to this the stench in or around grave yards/cemeteries was powerful and never ending. That was one reason why major cities like New York, Paris, London, etc.. ordered no new burial grounds within certain city limits and moved things out to country/suburbs.

Team Cremation.

I think it’s absolutely foul to embalm corpses and bury them in sealed containers.

Can’t we set up Liberty or Governor’s Island as a crematorium?

There are 4 crematories in the NYC area and each can do 25/day. So you can say "cremate them" all you want but the funeral industry can't handle the amount of bodies currently and storage at each fun home is maxed out. The NYC health dept should create a few more refrigerated rooms because they'll need it for the next wave. I think running those refrigerated trucks is noisy and smelly (from exhaust).

Put them in the freezer at a huge convention centre or hotel.

Meanwhile, south of the border ...

[quote]Various state and federal laws have sought to reign in worse of abuses regarding final arrangements

Oh, dear.

This funeral home’s license has just been revoked.

The funeral home owner has now lost his license. Thank goodness! He belongs in jail.

Reminds me of the Jonestown massacre. The helicopters they used to transport all the remains had to be decommissioned because they couldn't get the smell out.

We’re these U-HAULS attached to Subarus?

Thanks for the echo, r58.

His echo was WAY more informative, with a source and everything. Certain DLers are so lazy. They just type the headline as their own post, as if that's sufficient, then get snarky at someone who actually provides a source and context. Hilarious.

I thought the excess dead were to be temporarily buried on Hart Island.

No, r63, that’s only for people who have no family or who weren’t claimed.

They don’t just throw all their dead in a hole on an abandoned island.

Why would you even think that?

NYC is total chaos

Humanity is total chaos.

R64

Unclaimed means just that in this situation. If family or someone reaches out to ME office within the two week time period decedent won't be sent to Hart Island, but held until final arrangements can be made.

Final arrangements are expensive and difficult undertaking in normal times, cannot imagine what it must be like nowadays.

For the record anyone can arrange funeral/burial of deceased. Back in the day often friends, neighbors in building or block, co-workers, etc.. would get together and pony up for those who died of HIV/AIDs and either had no family or they couldn't (or wouldn't) be bothered. This to prevent deceased from ending up in a paupers grave. IIRC on a few occasions a great effort was undertaken to have a couple of guys "sent" back home to be buried with their parents as there wasn't any other family living.

NYC/NYS used to require signed paperwork from family (if any are living) before a cremation can take place. This may have changed for all I know. Recall a trans who died and family wanted nothing to do with her in life nor death. Her friends got together to arrange a funeral and one of them flew out to the parents to get their signature on paperwork for cremation. IIRC that same friend took possession of ashes when it was all said and done.

The Governor had the license suspended because of disrespecting a bunch of dead bodies is horrible to Cuomo but to throw innocent homeless people off the subway to make them cleaner for rich white doctors is perfectly fine.

R68

You don't have a clue do you? Not a single one.....

Can assure you no "rich white doctors" are taking subways now and certainly didn't in large numbers even before covid-19.

If you would but read NYC news media large numbers of those still taking subways are essential workers who are mostly middle class to poor. Nurses, nursing assistants, home health/help aides, those working in shops/supermarkets, laundromats, delivery persons, etc....

These people cannot afford nor have the ability to wait out things safely ensconced out in Long Island, New Jersey, Westchester or wherever . Have ridden subways many times since this thing started and largely it is nothing but what one has said.

OTOH subway trains and platforms have become disgusting thanks to the homeless. In the absence of riders and other reasons they have moved into the system and there isn't an effective way to get them out. NYPD chucks them off trains for various rule violations, and they just get right back on when another arrives. As trains pass stations you see what basically have become underground homeless camps.

[quote] Unclaimed means just that in this situation. If family or someone reaches out to ME office within the two week time period decedent won't be sent to Hart Island, but held until final arrangements can be made.

Yes, I know. I was responding to the poster’s question who wondered why they weren’t buried on Hart Island.

I don’t get what you’re trying to say to me.

Perhaps the armies of starving rats will eat the homeless?