For most deathcare professionals, the demands of the pandemic created the most mentally, physically, and emotionally working conditions of your careers. Imagine, though, that you were dealing with that volume of work in a town with no electricity, running water, or a working hospital. This is the situation in Venezuela since twin earthquakes struck the country’s northern coast on June 24 — and it’s not the only place this summer where the system meant to receive the dead has simply run out of room.
Six thousand miles away in Paris, France, funeral directors have been fielding call after call from families seeking a place that will take their loved one into their already overcrowded facility. A record-shattering heat wave has pushed France’s death rate well above normal, and mortuaries hit capacity within days.
Although these are two very different disasters, the funeral professionals in these countries are facing similar challenges while they strive to serve families desperate for their help.
Venezuela: 400 bodies a day, and nowhere left to put them
The magnitude 7.2 and 7.5 quakes that struck near Yaracuy state on June 24 rank among the strongest to hit the region since 1900, and the death toll — officially over 2,500 as of this week, according to CNN — is widely believed to be an undercount. One forensic pathologist working a makeshift morgue told CNN she believes the true number is closer to three times the government’s figure. Her facility alone has been processing around 400 bodies a day with no refrigerated capacity left, which means body bags are being left outside in the sun to await identification.
The massive losses have also impacted identification efforts. According to the Associated Press via PBS, a forensic technician (who has worked seven straight days since the quakes hit) estimates that roughly a third of the dead are being processed with no one there to name them.
Paris: A phone that won’t stop ringing
If Venezuela’s crisis is one of infrastructure collapse, Paris’s is a case study in what happens when a stable system gets hit by volume it was never built to absorb. One mortuary director told the Associated Press that with all 32 spaces in his cold room full, he’s been telling grieving families “non” — over and over, all day.
“We’re facing a really catastrophic situation,” he said. “I’m getting hundreds of calls.”
France’s national public health agency recorded more than 1,400 deaths on back-to-back days at the heat wave’s peak; the normal daily death rate is closer to 900 to 1,000. About 85 percent of those additional deaths involved people 65 and older, with a 40 percent jump in deaths occurring at home, largely among elderly residents living alone. Paris deathcare workers have resorted to storing bodies at mortuaries up to 50 miles away while they wait for temporary refrigerated containers to arrive.
Conflicting reports
Political authorities aren’t helping the situation for deathcare professionals in either Venezuela or France In Venezuela, but for two different reasons.
In Venezuela, critics are accusing the government of undercounting the death toll being witnessed by forensic workers to obscure the scale of its emergency response failure. However, these critics may be right to be suspicious, as the government never released an official toll after deadly 1999 landslides in the same region. Officials in France aren’t hiding numbers, but they’re racing to catch up with them, since many home deaths among the elderly still aren’t captured electronically.
Death tolls from mass-casualty events are often provisional for weeks, sometimes months, and the deathcare professionals doing the counting are often better informed, in real time, than the agencies reporting the numbers.
Preparation is key
We pray that Connecting Directors readers won’t have to contend with the extreme death toll challenges of natural disasters and weather emergencies, but it is always best to be prepared for various contingencies. Mutual aid agreements with neighboring homes, a plan for temporary refrigerated storage, and a working relationship with your local emergency management office are a start.
“Do you have room for one more?” can be one of the hardest questions a funeral director can be asked to answer.
