Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, February 13, 1992 TAG: 9202130340
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: RON BROWN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
ROANOKE TAXPAYERS FOOT BILL FOR RIDES TO THE MORGUE
In these hard economic times, there just ain't any free rides anymore.Even for corpses.
City taxpayers now must pay $50 if a body is given a lift to the Community Hospital morgue at the medical examiner's request.
Funeral homes and other body haulers used to do it for free, but about a year ago some corpse carriers started complaining about hauling bodies for nothing.
That's when spirited negotiations began.
"I wasn't happy about it," said Sam Oakey of Oakey's Funeral Service. "I think something was not fair in the system."
Police got dragged into the debate because officers are on the front lines of the corpse patrol.
If police find a body on the street or find someone dead in a home, they just can't leave it; yet they have no way to move it.
Oakey said he's sensitive to that.
"I'm not going to leave a body on the street with a sheet over it while people are fussing over $50," he said. "I don't care if we get paid or not, we're still going to pick up the bodies."
About 50 times a year, city police receive calls about dead bodies. Officers try to contact relatives and determine whether the person had a medical condition that led to the death.
If the dead person had no doctor, the medical examiner decides whether the body should be sent to the morgue.
Oakey said state law precludes body carriers from being reimbursed unless the medical examiner actually does an autopsy. But often, even when a body is taken to the morgue, an autopsy is not undertaken because the medical examiner can tell from a superficial examination what caused death.
No autopsy, no money for the hauler. The carriers have been left holding the bag, the body bag, so to speak. In better financial times, they were more willing to let it - the body - ride.
Now, though, struggling through the recession, the corpse toters are tired of absorbing that expense and are billing the city.
"You don't know what you're dealing with when you get a medical examiner's case," said Oakey, who estimates his cost at $100 per call.
Ben E. Rogers, general manager of Lotz Funeral Homes, said body haulers also face liability if an employee is injured while picking up a body or if a body is mishandled.
"In hot summer time, you run into a real problem," Rogers said. "They start deteriorating right away."
That can get tricky when the air-conditioned morgue is full and the medical examiner asks the funeral home to store the body for a while.
It rarely happens, Rogers said, but it's a nightmare when it does. His funeral homes don't have refrigeration, and morticians cannot embalm a body without permission of the family.
It's an unenviable position for an undertaker - stuck with an unsolicited body, no place to store it and no permission to process it.
The city might respond to the cash-for-corpse-hauling bind by calling for bids from body-hauling specialists like J-Poff Service and J.W. Law Transport.
"They're private removal businesses," Oakey said. `'They do it strictly for money."
The city recently set aside about $3,000 specifically for body removal. Wanda Reed, director of city emergency medical services, said interested body haulers might receive calls on an alternating basis. Or body work might be doled out to the lowest bidder.
While some localities use rescue squads to remove bodies, that is not practical in Roanoke, said Reed, who supervises city rescue workers. With 14,000 calls a year, rescue workers have little time to transport bodies.
Reed, who helped develop the city's new policy, sees it as an opportunity to clear off her desk.
Her "Dead Body" planning file can go.