NYC temporary morgue a reminder of pandemic

NEW YORK — One morning last month, a dozen mourners gathered by a fresh grave to bury four people who were cast into limbo as New York City contended with COVID-19.

Each was among hundreds of people whose bodies have lingered in a temporary morgue set up at the height of the city’s coronavirus crisis last year and where about 200 bodies remain, not all of them virus victims.

The fenced-off temporary morgue in an industrial part of Brooklyn is out of sight and mind for many as the city celebrates its pandemic progress by dropping restrictions. But the facility — which the city plans to close by summer’s end — is a reminder of the loss, upheaval and wrenching choices the virus inflicted in one of its deadliest U.S. hotspots.

James Brown, George Davis, Diane Quince and Charles Varga died of various causes some months before their mid-June burial in Staten Island’s Ocean View Cemetery. Officials found no next of kin.

“But we know that they lived, not friendless, but with friends and family,” Edwina Frances Martin, Staten Island’s public administrator of estates, told a handful of Brown’s friends and volunteers who attend such funerals. “Because now they’re all part of our family. And we’re a part of theirs.”

Some New Yorkers are troubled that hundreds of others at the morgue still wait to be laid to rest.

“Still these bodies wait — for what?” asks Kiki Valentine, a Brooklyn minister and funeral services assistant. She wrote to officials to seek an explanation and propose steps she feels could help, such as publishing public obituaries for the deceased.

Virus deaths alone peaked above 800 a day citywide at one point in April 2020 — deaths from all causes usually average about 150 — overwhelming funeral homes, cemeteries and hospital morgues. The temporary morgue was established that month to give families more time to arrange funerals. There is no rule for how long bodies can stay at the temporary facility.