Ada County Coroner’s Office running out of space for bodies as case numbers climb

It’s not something that the staff at the Ada County Coroner’s Office wants to do, or even talk about.

But if they run out of space, there really isn’t an option other than “stacking bodies.”

“Stacking,” however, doesn’t mean the staff is piling bodies on top of each other. It means they might have to put two smaller people side-by-side on the same autopsy table.

“We want each decedent to have their own table. ... From a family point of view, it’s really insensitive to stack,” said Ada County Coroner Dotti Owens, who was re-elected to her second four-year term last November and noted that known homicide cases have to have their own table for evidence preservation.

The cooler at the coroner’s office, where bodies are held until they are released to funeral homes, is operating right at capacity most days. It can hold 15 to 18 bodies, without stacking. If there are more than 10 bodies, the additional ones have to go on cots and smaller folding tables to fit.

The number of bodies that have been processed at the coroner’s office has grown significantly in recent years, according to data provided by Owens.

Last year, the office took in 727 bodies, including 152 out-of-county autopsies — up from 417 bodies, including 92 out-of-county autopsies, in 2011. That’s a 74 percent increase in seven years.

The coroner says several factors, many of them quite sad, are keeping the cooler full: population growth, drug overdoses, suicides and an increasing number of unclaimed bodies. She’s worried that a weekend when there’s a couple of multiple-casualty incidents, such as the recent quadruple-fatal crash on Cherry Lane near Meridian, could create an overflow.

“They are busting at the seams,” said David Dembowski, owner and funeral director of Boise Funeral Home. “The general public, as a rule, doesn’t place a lot of value or knowledge in this because it isn’t something that they normally deal with. But when it winds up on their watch, the coroner’s office is a big deal.”

The Boise metro area ranks No. 7 on a list of the fastest-growing regions in the country, the Statesman reported last year. The U.S. Census said population growth numbers showed that 34 people moved to Ada County per day, or over 1,000 per month, from July 2016 to July 2017.

“As we continue to grow at 1,000 people a month, or whatever we’re growing at right now, this is going to become more of a problem more quickly,” Owens said.

Building situation

The Ada County Coroner’s Office, also called the Morris Hill Morgue, is at 5550 Morris Hill Road, just east of Curtis Road. From the street the two-story building looks large, and it is: 26,742 square feet.

But the county-owned building was built as a warehouse in 1966 and remodeled to accommodate the coroner in 2002. And it houses more than just Owens’ office.

In fact, the coroner occupies 13,425 square feet — or about half the building, according to a comprehensive study of county buildings released last June.

The morgue also has two autopsy suites in a room that is about 200 square feet. The cooler/freezer unit where bodies are stored is about 26 feet by 21 feet, or 550 square feet, a floor plan provided to the Statesman shows.

Bodies are brought in and out of the building via a ramp on the west side. They are moved from a van to a funeral cot, or gurney, and then weighed and rolled into the morgue. Autopsies are generally done on weekdays, unless there’s a homicide or other special situation that warrants it on the weekend.

The general public never sees the morgue, in part because it’s a secure area of the building where evidence must be protected from tampering and theft. There are no family viewings of bodies there.

The rest of the building is used for general storage: Ada County Sheriff’s Office felony arrest records, county office furniture and supplies for the county jail.

The Ada County Facilities Master Plan prioritized replacement of the coroner’s office third behind expansion of the Ada County Jail and public safety complex, and expansion of the Ada County Courthouse complex and parking garage.

“Morris Hill is significantly undersized for the current Ada County caseload, offers disjointed and inefficient office space for the coroner’s staff, lacks the modern security and surveillance equipment needed to maintain accreditation and will be incapable of accommodating any future growth,” the report says.

The report suggests that a new site will be needed that offers the coroner’s office 19,200 square feet by 2025 and 23,800 square feet by 2040.

Processing more bodies each year

The mission of the coroner’s office is to determine cause and manner of death. They investigate unattended, sudden, suspicious or accidental deaths, and those that occur within 24 hours of being admitted to the hospital. They also investigate child deaths for which doctors don’t have a cause or the manner is not natural.

The coroner’s office has two full-time pathologists and one part-time pathologist who conduct inspections, partial autopsies and full autopsies. Staff aim to process the bodies and move them out within 24 hours, but that’s not always possible.

So when they’re running at capacity, they might ask a hospital to hold a body overnight in its morgue until they can move others along to local funeral homes. It’s a complex juggling act because they can’t release a body to a funeral home until the family selects one, and that can be hard for shocked, grieving families.

“Sometimes the pressure is put on families to make a decision quicker than they would like to about who [funeral home] to call,” Dembowski said. “Sometimes people just say: ‘We don’t want anything. We don’t need anything, just cremation.’ Then later they think, ‘We need more than that.’ Families sometimes change their minds.”

At times, the coroner’s staff can’t find anyone to claim the body, either because it cannot find family members or because families have abandoned them. Some of those are stored for months. In 2011, there were seven bodies that went unclaimed; in 2018, there were 21.

Owens said her office is trying to help families apply for indigent services funds if they don’t have the money to bury their loved ones.

“We help them walk through the whole process,” she said.

If all the tables and cots in the cooler are full, room has to be made — so some bodies might have to share the same table. Legal issues are a concern, as some bodies might be part of criminal investigations.

“Can you imagine a defense attorney hearing we had two bodies on one table?” Owens said. “There’s all kinds of problems that can arise out of that.”

The Ada County coroner is contracted to do autopsies for 33 counties and three Native American reservations. The majority of out-of-county autopsies involve bodies that are brought in and moved out the same day, Owens said. They store bodies from other counties only if under court order.

The out-of-county autopsies bring in hundreds of thousands of dollars each year, helping the office meet its bottom line without having to seek more money from Ada County taxpayers, Owens said.

What’s next?

Though the Ada County Master Facilities Plan offers a prioritized list of upgrading county facilities, it’s unclear when the coroner’s office will rise to the top of the list for a renovated or new office. Estimates for three different options ranged from $17 million to $28 million, the report shows.

Former Ada County Commissioner Sharon Ullman, who ran for county commissioner last year, publicly raised concerns about rising costs in the coroner’s office, the Statesman reported in November. Owens’ staff grew from 18 to 27 between 2016 and 2017, and the budget grew from $1.8 million to $2.9 million.

Owens told the Statesman in November that she raised employees’ wages to be in line with the national pay rate for coroner’s offices, and also reduced overtime. She said employee retention for the “emotionally draining” jobs had been an issue.

There are physical challenges to expanding the existing cooler or adding another cooler to the building, Owens said, but she’s exploring those options. She’s also planning to apply for a grant from Homeland Security to help cover the cost of a new cooler, estimated at $500,000 for the unit and installation.

Diana Lachiondo, who was elected to the three-member Ada County Commission last November, said she hasn’t yet toured the office but will be doing that soon.

“During the course of the campaign for office I had the opportunity to discuss the coroner’s facilities challenges,” Lachioando said via email Friday. “I specifically interfaced with Dotti Owens around the opioid epidemic and our mutual interests in working collaboratively to address it. Unfortunately, Dotti’s team is the ‘last responder’ to these situations. I’m actively working with Dotti, the sheriff and the prosecutor’s office on the regional effort to stem opioid deaths in our community.”

The coroner’s office houses a trailer that’s designated for regional mass casualty incidents. It can hold up to 20 bodies, but it’s kept in the parking lot at the office. Because there is no functioning gate, it’s not secure.

“Can you imagine if we had overflow in that trailer and someone stole it?” Owens said of why it could not be used. Also, it’s for a disaster, not for day-to-day operations.

The coroner’s office also has a body storage plan in the event of a large-scale mass casualty. It has a memorandum of understanding with the U.S. Forest Service to use one of the coolers at Lucky Peak Nursery, which could hold hundreds of bodies, Owens said, if a disaster occurred.

This story was originally published March 4, 2019 at 5:00 AM.