The Jacksonville medical examiner’s office doesn’t have enough room for its bodies, and hasn’t had enough room for far too long.
The City Council, forced to act now that the general population is aware of the situation, could vote next week on an emergency fix. An emergency fix for the fifty year old outdated facility that was too small for the county’s needs long before the opioid crisis began.
The number of body trays would increase from 50 to 90 with a new outdoor walk-in morgue cooler. More equipment would be brought in and a new mobile unit would house offices. All of it would be a temporary fix.
As for a long term solution, the Mayor has a new $16 million medical examiners building included the city’s capital improvement plan, but that’s at least five years away, city Chief Administrative Officer Sam Mousa.said that will be moved up. “We are going to take action in the next couple of years to begin the process in developing a new facility,”
And what about the City Council?
Councilman Danny Becton said he’d like better data from the medical examiner, saying the city is catching heat for not fixing the issue sooner. “We do not have the data coming to us that we can do any type of forecast of what her needs are,” Becton said.
Well, Councilman, the city should be catching heat. The Medical Examiner has been begging for help since last year, it is well documented, but you and the rest of the City Council have ignored her.
February 2017
“A public health crisis spinning out of control.”
Dr. Valerie Rao, medical examiner for Florida’s 4th District, describes North Florida’s opioid epidemic. The district encompasses Duval, Clay, Nassau, Hamilton and Columbia Counties.
Rao said the number of local overdoses due to opioid abuse is on such a dramatic increase that the freezer where bodies are stored awaiting an autopsy is filled to capacity. “We have had so many cases,” she said. “And these are young people dying, unaware of what they’re buying on the street.”
The number of bodies piling up at the morgue due to overdoses is so large, Rao said her office has had to tell hospitals and funeral homes they need to keep bodies there until space is made available.
~From an Interview by Melissa Ross, Host and Producer, “First Coast Connect”
February 2017
Jacksonville’s Department of Public Works prepared a report for the city which said, “The District 4 Medical Examiner’s Office has outgrown the space.” “During the past six months, the MEO had been at capacity several times just for the normal workload/processing space,” the report said. When the medical examiner’s office is full, hospitals and funeral homes have to keep bodies longer.”
May 2017
“Not a single day that I can recall in the past let’s say eight months, that we have not had a drug overdose. Not one day goes by,” said Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Valerie Rao. Rao says the morgue is running out of space because opioids are killing so many.
“We’ve never had drugs like this before, ever, ever in the history of this office,” Rao said.
She says she needs more money for autopsies and more space for the bodies.
~From an interview with Jenese Harris, News4jax
August 2017
For the third year in a row, the proposed Jacksonville city budget contains no money for updating or expanding the medical examiner’s office, that’s despite an increased workload and overcrowding from drug-overdose deaths. The Duval County medical examiner’s office was last expanded in the 1990’s.
November 2017
“A dire lack of space,” are the words written by the medical examiner to the Jacksonville City Council. Dr. Valerie Rao emailed the entire City Council, saying, “We have one body on the ground, which is not an ideal situation. Bodies cannot be autopsied because there are no trays and the bodies are on racks.” She goes on to write the facility turned away six more bodies this week “because we have no room … I am just keeping you all in the loop as to the dire lack of space that we are facing.”
~emails obtained by Lynnsey Gardner of News4Jax
The city council has had more than ample warning and time to prevent a body from ever having to be placed on the floor and they did nothing.
Hopefully next week they will finally take action to prevent this from happening again.