Drone footage captures NYC workers burying bodies in a mass grave on Hart Island

[Dennis Donovan]

Last edited Fri Apr 10, 2020, 05:21 AM - Edit history (1)

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This drone footage captures NYC workers burying bodies in a mass grave on Hart Island, just off the coast of the Bronx. For over a century, the island has served as a potter’s field for deceased with no known next of kin or families unable to pay for funerals.

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6:18 PM - Apr 9, 2020

More:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-usa-hart-island-idUSKCN21R398

New York City hires laborers to bury dead in Hart Island potter's field amid coronavirus surge

NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York City officials have hired contract laborers to bury the dead in its potter’s field on Hart Island as the city’s daily death rate from the coronavirus epidemic has reached grim new records in each of the last three days.

The city has used Hart Island to bury New Yorkers with no known next of kin or whose family are unable to arrange a funeral since the 19th century.

Typically, some 25 bodies are interred each week by low-paid jail inmates working on the island, which sits off the east shore of the city’s Bronx borough and is accessible only by boat. That number began increasing in March as the new coronavirus spread rapidly, making New York the epicenter of the global pandemic.

There are about two dozen bodies a day, five days a week buried on the island, said Jason Kersten, a spokesman for the Department of Correction, which oversees the burials.

</snip>

[underpants]

1. Just to be skeptical

They are doing this by hand? Shovels?

They didn't dig that by hand that's for sure.

[cayugafalls]

3. They have equipment. It happens every week, according to this article.

It seems the city buries unclaimed bodies there every week, so the trench must have been dug a while ago.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8205237/Prisoners-hazmat-suits-continue-dig-mass-graves-NYCs-Hart-Island.html

Quite disturbing.

[underpants]

5. Okay. That makes sense

See I read into it that it was COVID victims. My mistake.

[cayugafalls]

8. The article does state that the number of burials seems to be rising and

that the workers are now wearing hazmat suits. So it could be unclaimed COVID deaths are among the new burials.

Still quite disturbing.

[underpants]

9. Yeah it does

Part of running a city we don't think about or want to. I really feel for people who literally have no one. Wow.

[HarlanPepper]

4. Yes, My bullshit meter just blew up.

[underpants]

6. cayugafalls has an explanation

This is not unusual.

[HarlanPepper]

11. Indeed, it is real.

My first two thoughts:

1-This is really fucking sad.

2-How can we use it to get rid of Dump so it doesn't happen again.

[Dennis Donovan]

19. It's not bullshit

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-usa-hart-island-idUSKCN21R398

New York City hires laborers to bury dead in Hart Island potter's field amid coronavirus surge

NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York City officials have hired contract laborers to bury the dead in its potter’s field on Hart Island as the city’s daily death rate from the coronavirus epidemic has reached grim new records in each of the last three days.

The city has used Hart Island to bury New Yorkers with no known next of kin or whose family are unable to arrange a funeral since the 19th century.

Typically, some 25 bodies are interred each week by low-paid jail inmates working on the island, which sits off the east shore of the city’s Bronx borough and is accessible only by boat. That number began increasing in March as the new coronavirus spread rapidly, making New York the epicenter of the global pandemic.

There are about two dozen bodies a day, five days a week buried on the island, said Jason Kersten, a spokesman for the Department of Correction, which oversees the burials.

</snip>

[Hortensis]

20. Just realized, every city and county must have a potter's field. nt

[Dennis Donovan]

21. They do - my small city has one

There's a State correctional facility in my town and inmates who die and are unclaimed are buried there.

[HarlanPepper]

27. You missed my other response.

[Wellstone ruled]

2. This video should be shown on every network news show

every day for a week.

[diva77]

16. It should be shown split screen everytime Dump holds a presser

[Wellstone ruled]

17. Checkmate!!

[FM123]

26. Yes!

And in tv ads as well.

[Alex4Martinez]

7. TRUMP . . DID . . THIS.

It's time to draw up charges.

[Princess Turandot]

12. This is the usual periodic practice in NYC for the remains of unidentified or unclaimed decedents..

In recent years, about 52,000 to 54,000 people have died annually in the city. According to Wikipedia, about 1,500 of them will eventually wind up on Hart's Island.

Other jurisdictions (LA, for one) cremate their remains in similar circumstances but here, they bury them.

Where information exists, it's actually possible for someone to locate an individual buried there, and in some cases at least, have the remains exhumed and moved. I know this because my mother effectively did just that about 20 years ago. She had learned about the death of a very elderly woman with whom she had a slight acquaintance some months after it happened. She knew via a church society that the woman had made arrangements for her own funeral some years prior to her death, so she called the medical examiners' office to find out where she had been laid to rest. She somehow got them to tell her the information, then contacted the local funeral director involved, who had the authority to act in the matter, and some weeks later, the woman was relocated to her cemetery plot.

I would not have sent a drone to capture this......to each their own, I suppose.

You can see the island here in Google Maps: https://goo.gl/maps/hPEvyMpDKJpp54Es6 The cemetery occupies the wider, northeastern section. The structures on the lower third are largely historical ones that haven't been in use in upwards of a hundred years.

[HarlanPepper]

14. Interesting.

Last edited Fri Apr 10, 2020, 12:14 PM - Edit history (2)

Bet this will be leveraged politically in the fall so Dump isn’t around for round 2. Hell, it's already yielding results. Trump Burial Pits is trending on Twitter.

[Dennis Donovan]

23. Normally, approx 25 / wk. Now, it's approx 125 / wk.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-usa-hart-island-idUSKCN21R398

New York City hires laborers to bury dead in Hart Island potter's field amid coronavirus surge

NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York City officials have hired contract laborers to bury the dead in its potter’s field on Hart Island as the city’s daily death rate from the coronavirus epidemic has reached grim new records in each of the last three days.

The city has used Hart Island to bury New Yorkers with no known next of kin or whose family are unable to arrange a funeral since the 19th century.

Typically, some 25 bodies are interred each week by low-paid jail inmates working on the island, which sits off the east shore of the city’s Bronx borough and is accessible only by boat. That number began increasing in March as the new coronavirus spread rapidly, making New York the epicenter of the global pandemic.

There are about two dozen bodies a day, five days a week buried on the island, said Jason Kersten, a spokesman for the Department of Correction, which oversees the burials.

</snip>

[BGBD]

13. Two things

could be driving up deaths.

First, COVID. It's certainly taking a huge, potentially overlooked, impact on the homeless who would be very likely to end up on Hart Island.

Second, deaths from other causes will increase as well now that so many medical resources are committed to COVID and many people are afraid to present for medical attention out of fear of being infected.

[RB TexLa]

15. I'll be honest. If I out live about two or three more people there really wont

be anyone left to claim my body. I would still have cousins and other relatives but they don't know me. I actually looked at plots and in the US many, if not most you buy for infinity. Who really thinks someone is going to be tending to their grave in 2420?

Many places it's 100 years then they dig you up and do whatever with you, some lower you down and bury someone above you.

I beginning to think I'd be fine with that hole in the dirt.

[Jamastiene]

22. My mother arranged and planned what happens to my body without asking me.

It was going to be my 46th birthday "present" until my aunt told her how extremely morbid that was. The way she ended up telling me about it was creepy and morbid too. My mother has since used a "ride" to a dentist appointment to force me to go sit for an hour outside this place she picked out for me and made me sit there and listen to her morbid crap, basically telling me this will trap me with her forever, whether I want it or not, which is NOT what I want, and she knows it. In other words, she KNOWS I do not want this and is forcing it on me whether I like it or not, because she won that lawsuit about my birth defects in my back and has money and I do not have money. It is one of her power plays to lord over me.

I have since cut all ties with my mother for that AND other abusive crap she pulled when my aunt died.

In a way, I hope when I do die, the fire ants do away with most of me and leave only bones by the time the city finds me when they come to repossess everything for not paying taxes because I died and couldn't. That way my mother doesn't get her way.

I resent the thought that because my mother has more money than I do, off a huge lawsuit she won regarding a pill she took for morning sickness that caused the birth defects I have to suffer from to this day, the state of North Carolina will just let her do whatever she wants with my body without ever asking me. That should be a crime, but apparently not in North Carolina. Apparently is it ok to sue a drug manufacturer and keep the money when the birth defects and damage happened to another person too, because that is exactly what she did to get a huge amount of money. It's sickening the way she throws that money around and how she uses it to lord over people, including and especially me.

Most likely, though, what will happen is that when I die, she will already be dead and I will end up in a potter's field. That is IF I am "lucky." That would be the lucky outcome, in my case. The only person who ever actually cared about me was my aunt. She died last October.

So, as it stands now, either I outlive my mother or she gets her way.

I hope I can outlive her, but the stress from all of the abuse from her all these years, alone, has already shortened my life. I can tell. I just hope I can outlive her. I don't want what she planned for my body without asking me. That is the height of selfishness and rudeness but not the most selfish or rude she has ever been to me. There has been much worse.

So, depending on how long it takes them to find my body, I might can win this, just by outliving her or only being found when they come to repossess my property long after I die. Maybe there is a chance either she won't be here then or won't know.

At this point, I just want the right to not be trapped next to my mother for eternity, in the most boring square shaped, nondescript building they call a mausoleum, on the most busy part of the most busy highway in this town. That doesn't sound like resting in peace at all to me. Basically, I will become ashes and have to spend eternity next to burning household garbage from the eastern part of town and next to all that traffic and be trapped with my mother and a bunch of strangers I don't even know in a boring ass building they get by with calling a mausoleum in this town.

I can't afford a lawyer and I cannot afford to pay for what I really want. She planned all of our deaths and what happens to our bodies, including my aunt and me, without asking if we even wanted that. My aunt wanted to be buried next to her mother in a completely different cemetery. My mother did this so she can trap us with her forever where SHE wants to be. I'd rather go in an unmarked grave in a potter's field than be trapped with her, specifically. I hate poverty and people who use their ill gotten money (for MY birth defects that I have to live with) to lord over others like this.

Right now, it's a waiting game to see who can outlive who now. Wish me luck! Otherwise, I don't even get the right to decide what happens to my own body in death. That sucks considering the amount of other abuse she has heaped on me until I finally had to sever all ties at 49 years old. That is how long it took, because my aunt kept telling me to take her abuse. She abused my aunt too. My aunt is not here to tell me to take that abuse any more. So, I am trying to get free. Will I ever be free? That is the question I have asked myself all my life. That, and more recently, will I even have a right to decide what happens to my body when I die. I thought people had that right, but not in North Carolina. Someone else can decide for you and do whatever they want if they have the money. I despise that. I'll take a potter's field or wherever they put cats and dogs they euthanize. Anything but being forced in the way my mother has tried to force this, then lording it over me knowing I don't have the money or human connections (again, from the abuse) to counteract her decisions for what happens to my body. Even in death, she is a control freak and will stop at nothing to get her way.

[Dennis Donovan]

18. Kick - addl info added to OP

[underpants]

24. Kicking too

This is one of those things we don't think about or want to but we need to.

[ffr]

25. tRump's Pence's & McConnell's legacies: mass graves for Americans

TRAITORS