It’s a dead wait!
Morgue closings bury city in delays
Everything takes longer in New York City — even burials.
Morticians are wringing their hands over the closing of two borough medical examiners’ offices, leading to delays in funeral services they say can last days.
“There’s no sensitivity,” said Robert Ruggiero, executive director of the Metropolitan Funeral Directors Association.
“We can no longer promise families when the individual will be available to our funeral directors.”
The burial backlog started two years ago when the city shuttered morgues in The Bronx and Staten Island in a budget-saving move.
Funeral directors in those boroughs say they now have to travel to medical examiners’ offices that are still open to retrieve bodies. Two City Council members, Corey Johnson (D-Manhattan) and James Vacca (D-Bronx), grilled Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Barbara Sampson about the situation Wednesday at a hearing.
“I am being told that immediately upon being notified by families experiencing a tragedy, funeral directors in The Bronx and Staten Island are now notifying families not to plan a specific date or time for a funeral,” said Johnson.
Sampson suggested quality-assurance measures — which were implemented two years ago to ensure bodies don’t get lost — could be causing the delays.
But she insisted they last hours, not days.
“I have to look into it,” she said after testifying. “Our aim is 100 percent accuracy, 100 percent of the time. If it takes a little bit lon- ger to release someone, you know, we apologize for that.”
The ME’s office came under fire three years ago when The Post revealed workers there removed organs from bodies without notifying next of kin, stuffed a hit-andrun victim’s body into a van loaded with recyclables and lost the body of a 71-year-old woman.
Ruggiero said closing the two offices and cutting back 24-hour service to 8:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. has not only led to routine delays that last “days,” but has forced the ME’s office to give preference to Muslim and Jewish families.
Those religions require burial within a short time period.
“Everybody is trying to be sensitive,” he said. “But the wheels need to be greased because it’s not working smoothly.”