Can't afford to bury a dead person...
 

http://money.cnn.com/2009/10/01/news...rgue/index.htm

DETROIT (CNNMoney.com) -- 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."

Lifelong Detroit residents Darrell and Cheryl Vickers understand this firsthand. On a chilly September morning they had to visit the freezer to identify the body of Darrell's aunt, Nancy Graham -- and say their goodbyes.

The couple, already financially strained, don't have the $695 needed to cremate her. Other family members, mostly in Florida, don't have the means to contribute, either. In fact, when Darrell's grandmother passed recently, his father paid for the cremation on a credit card -- at 21% interest.

So the Vickers had to leave their aunt behind. Body number 67.

"It's devastating to a family not to be able to take care of their own," said Darrell. "But there's really no way to come up with that kind of cash in today's society. There's just no way."

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.

"One way we look back at a culture is how they dispose of their dead," said the county's chief medical examiner, Carl Schmidt, who has been in his position for 15 years. "We see people here that society was not taking care of before they died -- and society is having difficulty taking care of them after they are dead."

0:00 /03:28Detroit's dead pile up
Detroit is not alone. The Los Angeles coroner's office said it, too, has seen an increase in the number of bodies abandoned. That's not surprising at a time when unemployment tops 10% in many cities and the median cost of a funeral in America hovers around $7,000. Cremation can cost $2,000.

Little help available
This is an issue of concern, said the Detroit mayor's office, but the city can't afford to offer any assistance. "The failure, through inability or choice, to bury the deceased is a reflection of the economic conditions that have arrested this region, where people are now forced to make emotionally compromised choices," said a spokesman in a prepared statement.

The state, however, does have some funds available to assist with burial costs. For fiscal year 2009, Michigan allocated $4.9 million for assistance, and of that, approximately $135,500 remains. Those in need of assistance can find grant applications at Michigan Department of Human Services offices, most funeral homes, and at Michigan.gov/dhs.

The Vickers did not know about the funds until CNNMoney notified them. But, fortunately, they were eventually able to scrape together the $695 and will be able to cremate their aunt with help from Social Security, social services and their aunt's church.

The way Darrell sees it, the stimulus package should have helped people in situations like this, rather than to "spark the economy and sell cars. We can't take care of our own when it comes to laying them to rest and letting them rest in peace."

'Reflection of the economy'
Believe it or not, the Vickers are among the fortunate.

Dozens of other bodies remain, some never identified. And they can't be disposed of until their families come forward or the county's burial fund is replenished when the 2010 budget is approved. There were 66 bodies before Aunt Nancy's, and they'll be interred on a first-arrived-first-buried basis.

"There are many people with sad lives," said Schmidt. "But it is even sadder when even after you are dead, there is no one to pick you up."

And in a town with so much need, Schmidt noted one more cause for concern: The increase in unclaimed bodies is not due to an increase in murders -- though the rate remains high -- but due to natural causes. Schmidt speculated that many of the deceased didn't have health insurance or could no longer afford medication for the chronic medical conditions.

"If anything is a reflection of the economy, that is a reflection of the economy," he said.

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

"I feel sadness because I can recall when it [Detroit] was really booming," said investigator Samuels. "I don't think a lot of people are really aware that these types of things are happening in such a wide area."

dig a big hole and dump them in it. no biggy... they're bodies... the person they were before no longer exists. big waste of money and time... fuuuuck it

For real? Just throw them all in a huge bon fire.

ah my cousins live in warren michigan and grandparents in roseville and i was born in royal oak.. **** that state.

Yeah, not sure why a mass grave wouldn't work out here. I am sure they could get some prisoners to dig a really deep hole to dump the bodies in. Give relatives a choice, either they come pick up their body or it goes in the mass grave, everyone involved would be immune from lawsuits afterward.

because michigan is full of retards. Doubt that would happen.

Fixed for accuracy.

or donate the bodies to science.

+1. Personally, I think any unclaimed body should go to science.

feed the bodies to pigs... they'll destroy the remains, even the bones

Thats the true ingrediat to making good bacon anyway.

sell them to hollywood and grant them permission to use dead bodies purchased in such a way in films.

You just want me Necro Porn. . weirdo.

Gasoline and a match seem to be pretty cheap.

slingshot them into space

It's probably because I'm ignorant of the process -- but how in the hell does it cost just shy of $700 to cremate somebody?

I'm going to guess that a lot of that cost is 'fees' to keep the incinerator(s) and whatnot functioning, but still, that seems ridiculous.

make human blankets out of them for the homeless

^^that.

Why not donate them to science? Seems like the logical answer? Or donate them to mythbusters. No more of that ****ty yellow gel stuff.

cut them up and package them as TV dinners for the poor

Retorts, or Crematories, have to be run almost constantly so that they don't burn themselves apart by stopping and restarting. $700 is a low figure for cremations, and that figure is probably as low as it can get. As somebody that works in the death industry, I am perturbed by this whole situation, both from a buisness, and a moral standpoint. Also, they can't be donated without permission, and they need a viable medical history before they can even be considered. If a body has any disfigurement, recent surgery, or other such things, medical schools won't even touch them, and even at that point if they have a communicable disease, or are in the first stages of decomp, which they will be after sitting that long, mortuary colleges can't use them either.

^what is your idea on getting rid of them. you have alot of experience