Post by krwPost by Nick OdellUnless there's to be a post-mortem, in Argentina a funeral will take
place the next working day or at the latest the day after that.
And they used to be similarly quick in the UK. But then we had a bad
winter and a backlog developed and now a long gap seems inevitable as
they never caught up again. The bad winter happened about the same time
as heavy investment in storage facilities.
Our new-ish local crematorium does between 60 - 90 cremations a month,
which cover slightly over 50% of the deaths in the local area. This
works out at an average of 4 and a bit services a day. They have 2
chapels, but the car park space can be a little tight if there are
more than 2 sets of mourners at the same time, so they try to spread
them out a bit if possible until the new extension to the car park is
finished.
However, the capacity of the cremators, working on a 24 hour basis is
much higher than this. In the case of a major epidemic, when it would
be unlikely that there would be services, due to the risk of mourners
catching whatever was going about, they could cope with about 25 - 30
per day.
I may currently be doing an audit of said establishment, so have
certain key pieces of information stuck in my brain at the moment.
But the time is pretty much down to how quickly the paperwork can be
done and the family can make the arrangements and sort out the
schedule.
When my Gran died in 1986, she died on the Tuesday and the funeral was
on the Friday. I went on a trip to Sellafield Wednesday & Thursday.
When my aunt died in 2013, it was at least 2 weeks before the funeral
took place.
--
Fenny