More than 40 corpses were subjected to the superstorm’s wrath inside Bellevue Hospital's morgue on Oct. 29. Staff in the medical examiner’s office were trying to move the bodies to higher compartments -- while water poured into the First Avenue flagship city hospital -- when firefighters ordered them to evacuate.
The 44 deceased were in body bags -- all but eight of them awaiting a city burial on Hart Island -- Ellen Borakove, a spokeswoman for the medical examiner's office, said Monday. All had died of natural causes.
It would be a week before staff could get back into the office to assess the storm's toll on the dead.
A memo obtained Monday by the Daily News outlining healthcare union DC 37's gripes charged that Bellevue's "basement and morgue area flooding was so extensive that the bodies in the morgue have in effect drowned, unrefrigerated and decomposing."
Borakove conceded the unexpected high waters did seep inside many of the body bags during the storm and power outage, but she disputed a union claim that its workers were put at risk.
“Our office took the bodies out yesterday, after the water had been pumped out of the morgue, placed them in dry bags and safely moved them to our Queens and Brooklyn medical examiner offices,” Borakove said. It took four hours for staff to make the transfers and check that all the ID tags were correct Monday.
“I have never experienced this in my 25 years,” Borakove said.
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/40-corpses-subjected-sandy-wrath-article-1.1197172#ixzz2BRz1VevZ
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