'It's disturbing': Growing number of bodies left sitting in cold storage at N.L.'s largest hospital

Tucked away near a receiving bay and mere feet from a green garbage dumpster, a group of industrial freezers are holding a growing amount of human bodies outside Newfoundland and Labrador’s biggest hospital.

The freezers are overflow units for the hospital morgue, which is getting fuller as more human remains go unclaimed.

The problem is getting so big that health officials in St. John’s are now planning to build a permanent storage unit to expand the space at the hospital morgue.

“I will admit, it’s disturbing,” Health Minister Tom Osborne told reporters on Wednesday. “When I heard about this, I myself looked at these units and you know, it certainly rests on an individual. Anybody with any compassion would find it disturbing.”

Opposition leaders in Newfoundland and Labrador say more families simply cannot afford to pay the funeral bills to have their loved ones interred or cremated. Instead, the bodies are left in the storage facility.

“This government brought in freezer trucks because they were more focused on cost savings than on basic human dignity,” Jim Dinn, the leader of Newfoundland and Labrador’s NDP, alleged in the House of Assembly Wednesday.

“This government has failed to make sure support programs are properly funded and tied to inflation,” he said.

Provincial government support will pay up to $2,338 to some families to apply for financial assistance, but opposition leaders in the province say those rates haven’t been updated in years.

Osborne told reporters on Wednesday he wasn’t “certain” why more and more bodies are being held in the hospital morgue.

There is a process for the provincial government can appoint a public trustee to arrange funeral services if next-of-kin can’t, or won’t, make arrangements themselves. Osborne said that process is complicated and lengthy, which is contributing to the backlog.

Samantha Lahey said her grandfather, Gerry Rice, just narrowly avoided that fate.

Her family is one of many that has struggled to pay for the growing costs of funerals and end-of-life services.

When he died in February, her family faced an $8,000 bill for funeral services, a bill that had to be paid in full before the funeral home would take Rice’s remains away from the long-term care home where he died.

Samantha Lahey looks at flowers arranged for the memorial service for her grandfather, Gerry Rice. (Garrett Barry, CTV)

Lahey and her partner fundraised and worked tirelessly for a couple of days to get that money together — by the time they did, it was too late.

A director at the funeral home told Lahey her grandfather’s body had deteriorated too much to hold a wake. They proceeded straight to a cremation instead.

“My grandfather was in a chilled room in the basement,” she said. “He was in a chilled room. To me, that’s just, you’re in the basement with no heat.”

Were it not for that fundraising, and charity from friends and family, Lahey says, her grandfather would have been brought to the overflow morgue in St. John’s.

“My grandfather would, 100 per cent, definitely would end up in that trailer. One hundred percent.”

She called their experience after her grandfather’s death heartbreaking — and doesn’t understand why their funeral home couldn’t have helped sooner.

Lahey said the immediate financial stress that her family faced upon her grandfather’s death made the grieving process so much harder.

“He always looked out for everybody, and knowing that we couldn’t take care of him even though he took care of everyone else, I think it’s a hard pill to swallow.”