On the Hart Island in New York, they dig a mass grave for victims of COVID-19

In New York, they decided to prepare places for the mass burial of coronavirus victims due to many deaths from COVID-19. Hart Island was chosen for these purposes. A video of how they dig a mass grave for the dead, posted on his YouTube channel edition The Guardian.

Why was Hart Island chosen?

In New York, more and more people die every day due to diseases associated with coronavirus. Morgues can no longer cope with such a load. In this regard, the city has reduced the time during which it will store the remains of unidentified relatives of people before they are interred in the public cemetery of Hart Island.

Usually about 25 bodies per week are buried on the island, mainly those whose families cannot afford to organize a burial, or whose relatives did not recognize the dead. Now, the number of burials here has increased to almost 24 per day.

Mass burials are expected to be temporary until the city copes with the crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Recall that since the XIX century, the island of Hart has been used for the burial of New Yorkers who do not have close relatives. Located in the Long Island Strait off the southeast coast of the Bronx, the Desert Spit is the country's largest public cemetery with a dismal history. It housed a prison camp during the Civil War, there was a colony for tuberculosis patients, and in the 1980s this place became a haven for thousands of HIV / AIDS victims who were abandoned by families or were unable to receive proper burials.

What do the authorities say

According to the publication Daily MailOn April 9, workers in protective suits were spotted on Hart Island. A dozen hired workers were digging pits and dropping coffins into them, some of which had carved names.

On April 9, officials said they had no choice but to bury COVID-19 patients in the city cemetery, since it was a growing number of coronavirus victims and a shrinking space in morgues.

Usually, prisoners from Rikers Island are brought in to dig graves on Hart Island. But in connection with the outbreak of the epidemic, the Department of Corrections began to hire people to do this on a contract basis. “For safety reasons, the city's detainees are not helping with burials during the pandemic,” said department spokesman Jason Kersten. "Contractors are doing this important work under the supervision of DOC."

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The island can also be used as a temporary burial place if the mortality rate exceeds the capacity of the city morgue. “Hopefully it doesn't come to that,” Kersten said. "At the same time, we are ready for such a development of events."

The mayor of the city, Bill de Blasio, has not yet confirmed whether the victims of the coronavirus were or will be buried on Hart Island. But he said that the city may resort to using the island for temporary burial during the pandemic. “We may well face temporary graves,” he said.

How is a burial?

For burial on the island, the dead are wrapped in bags for corpses and placed in pine coffins. On each of them, the name of the deceased is indicated in capital letters, which in the future, if necessary, will help with the exhumation of the body. Coffins are placed in long narrow trenches dug by earth-moving machinery.

A former prisoner from Rikers Island, who had been working on the island for five months (until February this year), spoke about the grim operation that was being carried out there. Vincent Mingalone noted that he worked in a team of approximately seven people. Every Thursday they moved bodies from the truck to the place of mass burial.

The bodies were stacked in three piles in depth, and then covered with sand and earth.

Mingalone said he was not sure if there would be enough prisoners ready to do the job. During his time in prison, no one wanted to do such work voluntarily, because they considered it “disgusting” or “dirty,” and also because it was low paid compared to other work in the prison. Now, he added, it would be even more difficult to find those wishing for this work, since many prisoners were released. Recall that since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, about 1000 prisoners from Rikers Island were at large.

As previously reported ForumDaily New York:

• Some coronavirus victims may be temporarily buried to the Hart Island Special Cemetery, or even to public parks if the New York morgues are unable to cope due to mass deaths.
• New York has bypassed all countries outside the United States in the number of infections with the coronavirus COVID-19. As of April 9, state authorities confirmed the virus in another 10 thousand people. Total number of infected As a result, it amounted to almost 160 thousand. Cuomo called the outbreak of the coronavirus a “silent explosion,” adding that COVID-19 “struck society with the same randomness and became the same evil that we encountered during the September 11 attacks.”