
Dan Wright, secretary-treasurer of Teamsters Local 813, whose 500 members include funeral directors and cemetery workers, said the high number of deaths has slowed the back end of the system, the cemeteries and crematories.
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“Obviously we can’t be burying people in the dark,” he said.
And social distancing has altered the way people bid loved ones farewell.
“Funerals are basically about gathering together and celebrating somebody’s life and saying goodbye,” Wright said. “These things have been impossible to do. Funerals directors … have been reduced to becoming policemen to prevent people from getting together, standing too close, hugging each other.”
Sherman, the Brooklyn funeral home owner, said protecting clients and workers is a priority — ensuring distancing and providing sufficient personal protective equipment.
“In dealing with this pandemic our main concern is the living,” he said.
There are no face-to-face meetings with grieving families. All business is handled online or over the phone.
“We don’t want people in the building,” Sherman said.
The number of funerals Sherman handles tripled in recent weeks. His business and the memorial home that shares the building with it last week had about 100 calls.
His funeral home alone has been doing about 30 deaths a week. Three weeks ago, Sherman said, he brought in a refrigerated container with space for an additional 30 bodies.
“I’m turning down cremations unless its people that have prepaid them or people I know,” he said. “Cremations are one month out here in Brooklyn. I don’t want to be storing bodies here that long.”
A cremation oven broke down because of the volume
Richard Moylan, president of Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, started as a grass cutter in 1972. Now he’s closing in on five decades there.
“The volume of burials for us all at one time is overwhelming,” he said. “The volume of cremations is something we’ve never seen.”
Cremations at Green-Wood have jumped from as many as 70 to 130 per week, Moyland said. Burials more than doubled to a dozen each day.
“And if we had the capacity we would be doing more,” he said of cremations.
“People are sending bodies out of state, out of the city. We’re booked through the middle of May when six weeks ago you could just call up and say, ‘I’m coming in tomorrow or, even sometimes, I’m coming in an hour.’ Now, sadly, you need an appointment.”
Except for burials, cremations and custodial services, all other work has stopped.
“We’re not doing any tree maintenance,” he said. “We’re not doing much lawn maintenance. We’re not doing any monument preservation. It’s all hands on deck.”
One of five cremation ovens — which burn up to 1,800 degrees for 18 hours a day — broke from overuse, Moyland said.
“When we started going longer hours the chamber’s brick wall basically just gave way,” he said.
Moylan sometimes watches burials from his office.
“We try to keep burials as close to a traditional burial as we can,” he said. “We had a Covid victim and there were our guys in Hazmat suits and the family staying on the road away from the casket. Someone said a few prayers. They got back in their cars. Then I realized there were more cars of people who didn’t come out.”
‘He worked so hard all his life’
In Corona, Queens, Rajni Attavar and her sons celebrate Mooliya’s life by telling his story. He arrived in New York in the mid-1990s from Heroor village in Karnataka, India, where he taught chemistry at a university. He managed several chain drug stores. He was a security guard and worked five years as a subway station agent.
Mooliya had two online consultations with a doctor the days before his died. His eldest son said his father was told he didn’t need to be tested. Take Tylenol and stay hydrated, he was instructed.
“He worked so hard all his life,” Attavar cried. “No vacations. He was the smartest man. He went through a lot in his life. I didn’t know it was going to end up so bad for him.”
CNN’s Claudia Morales contributed to this report.