Air quality regulators have raised the limits on the number of cremations that can be performed in Los Angeles County, citing a death rate that is more than double the pre-pandemic standard and an uncontrollable accumulation of corpses.
More than 2,700 bodies were being stored in local hospitals and at the county coroner’s office on Friday, January 15, the south coast air quality management district said on Sunday, explaining its decision to enact an executive order suspending the limits of cremations.
This is the first time that AQMD on the South Coast has raised its cremation limits, said Nahal Mogharabi, the agency’s director of communications.
The 28 crematoriums in Los Angeles County are capable of carrying out more cremations, but most of their licenses include a monthly limit for cremations due to environmental regulations, the regulator said. Environmentalists have been asking for limits on cremations for years, which studies have shown to release toxic emissions of mercury from dental fillings. Mogharabi said that the “toxic impacts to the air” resulting from the executive order must be “relatively small”.
The order came at the request of the Los Angeles County coroner and the Department of Public Health, who confirmed that the buildup was itself a potential threat to public health, South Coast AQMD said. He also warned that the coroner predicted “another wave” of deaths that would begin four to six weeks after the New Year holiday.
A man who answered the phone at the Los Angeles Cremation Society said that no one was available to speak because they were too busy. “We are full,” he said, refusing to give his name.
The accumulation of bodies is just the last frightening detail to illustrate the seriousness of the coronavirus crisis in Los Angeles. As of Sunday, the county had suffered 13,848 deaths in total due to Covid-19, more than half of them in less than two months since Thanksgiving.
On Monday, California became the first state to register more than 3 million cases of the virus, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
Hospitals in the region struggle to care for the sickest of the more than 13,000 new cases diagnosed every day. Health officials instructed ambulances not to transport patients with little chance of survival; some hospitals are struggling to maintain their oxygen supplies.
The pressure on the “decedent management system” is only one aspect of the crisis. The California National Guard was called in to help hospitals and morgues by storing corpses in refrigerated trucks, reported the LA Times.
Meanwhile, hope for relief from the various coronavirus vaccines remains faraway. So far, California has administered the first doses of vaccination to just 2.2% of its population, one of the lowest rates in the country. Only Idaho, South Carolina, Georgia and Alabama lag behind, according to an analysis of the CDC data by the New York Times.