Some bodies double-bunked at Cook morgue

Cook County Medical Examiner Nancy Jones is blaming a confluence of unusual circumstances for causing the morgue to become so crowded recently that bodies were being doubled up on some cooler trays.

Jones attributed the overcrowding to a “collision” of factors: a spike in deaths during the recent holidays, a slow down in pickups from funeral homes in late December and early January and a delay in receiving coffins to hold the remains of the indigent.

In addition, burial of the indigent scheduled for November didn't take place because of poor weather, likely adding to the situation at the morgue.

Jones said there are more than 300 cooler trays at the county morgue. The overcrowding has been alleviated as funeral homes resume their normal hours, she said. Jones noticed empty spaces in the cooler during a walk-through Tuesday.

Because Christmas and New Year's fell on weekends this year, Jones said she was told many funeral home workers took weekdays off during that time frame which slowed pickups. Jones said there is normally enough room in the cooler to handle bodies brought to the morgue for long- or short-term storage. She is not looking to increase the size of the morgue's cooler, she said.

“It was only for a couple days that the cooler was a little snug,” she said.

There are protocols in place when the bodies at the morgue outnumber the available cooler spaces, Jones said. If the need arises for bodies to be doubled on a cooler tray, workers are asked to look for thinner corpses and they are put on the tray side-by-side.

Jones said doubling up in the cooler is rare, but the recent need was not as bad as it has been in the past. In 1995, a summer heat wave was responsible for hundreds of deaths in Chicago in just a few days, Jones said. Her office's resources were strained greatly during that time.