Morgue down, KHMH says backup can handle load

Since last Friday, the management of the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital has been dealing with a breakdown in the cooling system of the facility’s morgue. The situation worsened as over the weekend an unusually high number of deaths quickly filled the unit to capacity, leaving grieving relatives with more problems than they could handle. Today, Chief Executive Officer at the KHMH, Dr. Alvaro Rosado, says while technicians are on site trying to remedy the problem, the hospital’s contingency morgue is up to the task.

Dr. Alvaro Rosado, Chief Executive Officer, KHMH

“I would venture to say that it’s even better than what the original morgue is. In terms of the physical appearance, it might not be as good as, in that the original morgue is made of stainless steel; as it should be in a hospital for that kind of room. The original morgue has individual compartments that you can put the body in, and put them in a drawer and pull them out. In this cooling room area that we have, which is suitable for the job, it’s not as well appointed in that there are no individual cubicles. They are kept on individual beds or shelves or whatever, but it’s not the haul in/haul out kind of thing.”

“But Even if it’s not fixed for another week or another month, we will not have problems with the storage of bodies. We will have problems, if any, with autopsies. Autopsies can only be done in the original morgue setting and since that is not air conditioned, and since the nature of an autopsy would suggest that you would have some odours coming out. We might have a small problem there, but it’s nothing at all that I would think would be significant.”