Word: burial
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...Angeles County coroner's office has seen a surge in the number of bodies not claimed by families for cremation or burial because of economic hardship, according to the Los Angeles Times. At the county coroner's office - which handles homicides and other suspicious deaths - 36% more cremations were done at taxpayers' expense in the past fiscal year compared with the previous year, 712 vs. 525, the paper reported...
...traditional tourist mecca of Las Vegas is facing similar challenges. The coroner's office in Clark County, Nev., which includes Las Vegas, saw a 22% increase in burials and cremations of unclaimed bodies this year, jumping from 741 to 904. When burial costs exceeded $1 million in the 2003-04 fiscal year, the agency turned to cremating the unclaimed unless it could be determined that burial was required because of religious or other beliefs. Each cremation costs $425 to $475. (Read a grim story of unearthed graves outside Chicago...
That is still only a small fraction of what a traditional burial costs a family. (According to the most recent statistics from the National Funeral Directors Association, a regular adult funeral with burial, not including cemetery, monument or marker costs, averages $7,323.) Even so, the costs can quickly add up for a place like Wayne County. "Per capita, we're probably the fifth busiest medical examiner's office in the country," says Samuels. "We handle 13,000 death calls a year, and almost 3,600 bodies come through this system a year. So you're talking about 10 bodies...
...Here is what they've gleaned so far: Over a period of time that remains undetermined, the cemetery manager allegedly took payments, often in cash, from customers who believed they were buying new burial plots. In fact, authorities say, the manager ordered groundskeepers to unearth the coffins that were already buried in these plots. They were placed on trucks and disposed of in a remote section of the cemetery, often referred to as the "dump area," according to court documents. Bones often fell onto the roadway. Other times, groundskeepers would "double stack" human remains within a single, unmarked grave...
...fiercely resisted. Tom Dart, sheriff of Cook County, which includes Chicago and Alsip, observes that manicurists and barbers must endure more regulatory hurdles than most cemetery operators, including its managers and groundskeepers. Illinois, like many other states, is empowered to protect only the money that families invest in burial lots - fees intended for cemeteries' long-term maintenance. In many states, there is no single agency, government or independent, that keeps up-to-date records of how many human bodies are buried or cremated on a cemetery's grounds or the names of the buried. It isn't even clear...