Fort Totten Could House Bodies Of Coronavirus Victims: Report

BAYSIDE, QUEENS — The city may temporarily bury the bodies of coronavirus victims at Fort Totten if the pandemic worsens, according to the New York Daily News.

High-ranking city officials outlined the steps required to convert Fort Totten into a burial site during the pandemic in a March 29 email, writing, “If the current outbreak escalates, burials will occur at Fort Totten and Hart Island," the Daily News reported.

Yet Mayor Bill de Blasio has declined to publicly discuss the city's plans for unclaimed bodies of coronavirus victims, and his office denied the Daily News report that Fort Totten would be used for public burials.

“We’ve increased capacity enough that we do not believe we’ll have to move to temporary burials," Freddi Goldstein, de Blasio's press secretary, told the news outlet.

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As New York City's mounting coronavirus death toll puts a strain on its morgues, the medical examiner's office has adopted a new policy of keeping unclaimed bodies in storage for just 14 days before burying them on Hart Island, though families can later reclaim them.

Bodies temporarily buried at Fort Totten, a former cemetery that is now a park, could be more easily returned to families than those put on Hart Island, according to the Daily News.

The city is stationing hundreds of EMTs and paramedics at Fort Totten, after they came from across the country to help New York City's first responders tackle record numbers of 911 calls.

Read the full story in the New York Daily News.