BOSTON (AP) – Public Safety Secretary Kevin Burke has ordered the state medical examiner’s office to clear a backlog of bodies being stored at the office within two weeks.
Burke met Friday with Chief Medical Examiner Mark Flomenbaum and had “a productive, professional discussion dealing with the immediate problems facing the office of the Chief Medical Examiner, and alleviating those problems,” he said in a statement.
The meeting took place at the medical examiner’s office in Boston.
Burke said he told Flomenbaum to follow regulations agreed to last year that streamlined the process by which unidentified, unclaimed bodies are released to the state Department of Transitional Assistance for burial.
Burke was responding to revelations that an overwhelming amount of bodies and lack of adequate storage space at the medical examiner’s office forced workers to stack corpses and place some in a refrigerated truck meant to be used on a temporary basis.
State public safety officials are also looking into unsanitary conditions, a rise in employee injuries and a shortage of body bags. The regulations limit the time and to what lengths the medical examiner’s office must go to identify the bodies before deciding they can’t be identified and handing them over for burial.
“It’s not something we like to think about, but there are unfortunately people who are homeless whose bodies aren’t claimed,” Charles McDonald, a spokesman for Burke, said Friday.
Burke said he had reached an agreement with Flomenbaum to provide weekly reports to Undersecretary of Forensic Sciences LaDonna Hatton “so that conditions at the agency can be closely monitored to avoid future incidents such as those which occurred this week.”
Burke also ordered Flomenbaum to ask the Department of Public Health to conduct an air quality review of the offices, and to allow the Division of Occupational Safety to conduct a safety review and training.
Gov. Deval Patrick also pledged to look into the situation this week.
Conditions are so bad that one employee recently walked off the job.
Officials at the office said bodies were stacked three high on shelves and gurneys in the main cooler; at least five infants have remained in the cooler for about two years because the office has not been able to arrange burial; and poor ventilation has led to a constant odor of decomposition in the autopsy areas.
In addition, improper drainage and a heavy caseload have caused blood and bodily fluids to back up and pool onto the autopsy room’s floor.
Officials are also looking at how Flomenbaum has spent his budget since taking over the office in April 2005. State lawmakers increased the office’s operating budget by 38 percent from $5.7 million in the 2006 fiscal year to $7.9 million in the current fiscal year.
Flomenbaum took over a troubled agency. The office was accused of sending the wrong set of eyeballs for testing to determine whether an infant had died from shaken baby syndrome; and of misidentifying a fire victim’s body.
Flomenbaum vowed to increase staff, clean up the office and perform more autopsies.
AP-ES-03-16-07 1800EDT
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