Human remains backlog still in Newfoundland garage after months of outcry
CTV
Opposition parties in Newfoundland and Labrador say they’re growing frustrated at the decision by health officials to move freezers of unclaimed human remains into an underground hospital parking garage.
Opposition parties in Newfoundland and Labrador say they’re growing frustrated at the decision by health officials to move freezers of unclaimed human remains into an underground hospital parking garage.
The remains were moved within the past few weeks, and staff at the Health Sciences Centre in St. John’s have since erected a temporary wall in the underground garage that keeps the freezers out of public view.
“How they can come up and think that this is a great solution to a problem, I think that’s what caught everyone off-guard,” Barry Petten, a Progressive Conservative MHA, said on Thursday.
“This is like, you’ve got to be kidding me.”
Petten says he figured government and health officials in Newfoundland and Labrador would have ensured all the bodies inside the temporary freezers were given appropriate burials or funeral services — not shuffled into another location.
Prior to the move underground, the bodies were stored in freezer units in a receiving bay at the hospital complex.
According to Newfoundland and Labrador Health Services, the parking-garage construction is part of a larger development. It said the same area will become an expansion space for the morgue, a project that’s set to be completed in October.
