More bodies going unclaimed at Los Angeles morgue amid poor economy

LOS ANGELES, July 21 (Xinhua) -- More families in Los Angeles choose not to claim bodies of their members from authorities as a result of the poor economy, a newspaper report said Tuesday.

Bodies in increasing numbers are going unclaimed at the Los Angeles County coroner's office and the county morgue because families cannot afford to bury or cremate their loved ones, according to the Los Angeles Daily News.

At the coroner's office, which handles homicides and other suspicious deaths, 36 percent more cremations were done at taxpayers' expense in the last fiscal year over the previous year, from 525 to 712.

Meanwhile, the county morgue, which is responsible for the indigent and others who go unclaimed, saw a 25 percent increase in cremations in the first half of this year over the same period a year ago, rising to 680 from 545.

The demands on the county crematorium have been so high that officials there stopped accepting bodies from the coroner earlier this year. The coroner's office since has contracted with two private crematories to handle the overflow, the report said.

Once the coroner's office cremates an unclaimed body, the family can pay 352 U.S. dollars to the office to receive the ashes. The fee for claiming ashes from the morgue is 466 dollars.

According to the report, coroners and funeral directors around the United States say they are seeing the same trend as cash-strapped families cope with funeral costs.

Claiming a body from the Los Angeles County coroner's office costs 200 dollars, and a private cremation usually costs nearly 1,000 dollars, said David Smith, an investigator of the coroner's office.

Funeral homes charge an average of 7,300 dollars to transport and bury a body in a simple grave, according to the National Funeral Home Directors Association.