A New York City official announced Monday that the city might temporarily bury dead people in a park as the body count rises during the coronavirus pandemic.
Democratic Councilman Mark Levine tweeted that the city was grappling with an increase of dead bodies and overflowing morgues, pushing the city to “likely” use a local park for “temporary internment.”
“Soon we’ll start ‘temporary interment,’” he wrote. “This likely will be done by using a NYC park for burials (yes you read that right). Trenches will be dug for 10 caskets in a line.”
And still the number of bodies continues to increase. The freezers at OCME facilities in Manhattan and Brooklyn will soon be full. And then what? 8/
— Mark D. Levine (@MarkLevineNYC) April 6, 2020
“It will be done in a dignified, orderly–and temporary–manner. But it will be tough for NYers to take,” Levine wrote. “The goal is to avoid scenes like those in Italy, where the military was forced to collect bodies from churches and even off the streets.”
Levine clarified in a follow-up tweet that this “is a contingency NYC is preparing for BUT if the death rate drops enough it will not be necessary.”
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This tweet has gotten a lot of attention. So I want to clarify: the is a contingency NYC is preparing for BUT if the death rate drops enough it will not be necessary. https://t.co/6wLO8qWtML
— Mark D. Levine (@MarkLevineNYC) April 6, 2020
Mayor Bill de Blasio was also asked about temporary internments during a press briefing Monday.
“We may well be dealing with temporary burials so we can deal with each family later,” the mayor said in response. He added that he was “not going into details,” and didn’t “think it’s a great thing to be talking about.”
New York City has been a hot spot for the coronavirus, with more than 2,400 deaths and 14,205 patients in intensive care as of Sunday.
