Tarrant County Medical Examiner's Office Expects Surge In Deaths, Doubles Storage Space With Refrigerated Trucks
TARRANT COUNTY (CBSDFW.COM) - The Tarrant County Medical Examiner's office is expecting a surge in deaths, and for hospitals and funeral homes to run out of space to store bodies.
For that reason, they've doubled their storage space in Fort Worth, adding two refrigerated trucks able to store about 50 bodies each.
"It's the winter time of the year when hospitals are fuller already... they just felt like it was necessary to bring in two other trailers," said Tarrant County Judge Glen Whitley. "You've got any number of issues that all may be playing a small role in this increased number of bodies at this time."
Work crews finished adding a scaffold-supported rooftop Thursday, above makeshift plywood walls, that enclose the refrigerated trucks.
The additional storage comes as the county is reporting a rolling average of about 33 deaths every 7 days. That's lower, than the COVID deaths in the last week of July, when it was 55 deaths every 7 days.
The storage should be operational by next week, and doubles the medical examiner's capacity.
CBS 11 News reached out to several health systems, including JPS Hospital, which said they have not made any similar changes.
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