Pima County’s morgue is typically used for work the Medical Examiner’s Office has been doing for years to identify remains of migrants who died crossing the U.S.-Mexico border.

 Dean Knuth / Arizona Daily Star 2010

The situation has gotten scary at Carrillo’s Tucson Mortuary, says April Seybert.

For the last few weeks, the family-owned funeral home that’s been serving Tucsonans for over a century has been doing two funerals and two cremations a day. It has handled 50 more funerals this year than it did at the same point last year.

The funeral home’s collection of about a dozen-and-a-half cooler and table spots have remained at capacity.

“We’re really close to running out of room to where we’d have to turn families away,” said Seybert, the general manager. “To those that don’t think (the virus) exists, it’s here.”

The mortuary reached out to three other funeral homes in Tucson for storage help and were told by two of them that they, too, were at capacity, she said. They looked into getting a refrigerated truck to store bodies, similar to what was done in New York City as coronavirus deaths surged there earlier this year.

On Friday, she reached out to both the state’s funeral board and the county Health Department for help.

The latter announced later in the day that it is making available up to 150 spaces in the Office of the Medical Examiner’s morgue to help hospitals, funeral homes and mortuaries that have reached or neared capacity.

“Thankfully the Medical Examiner’s Office came through,” she said. “It’s difficult times. It’s a strange world we’re living in right now.”

Pandemic a toll on “last responders”

The limited space for body storage throughout the state — in Pima County, but also in Maricopa County, according to news reports — represents another critical moment in Arizona’s attempt to slow the spread of the coronavirus in what’s become one of the world’s worst virus hot spots.

The Arizona Department of Health Services has reported 273 new deaths statewide from the virus since Monday, some new and some through a process called death certificate matching. There have been a total of 2,082 deaths in Arizona, including 313 in Pima County, as of Friday.

In a news release, Pima County officials acknowledged that capacity has been an issue in the past few weeks but said that wasn’t primarily a result of people dying from the virus. Instead, that was due to a slower funeral process, as limits have been placed on the size of gatherings and travel, officials said.

The release notes that Pima County does not anticipate long-term storage of remains will be necessary.

“The Pima County Health Department said the need for the county to provide relief for some hospitals and funeral homes is not associated with any known surge of COVID-19-related deaths — the County reported no COVID-19 deaths yesterday — but instead appears tied to backlogs in the funeral industry,” the Friday release said.

Seybert disagreed with the county’s notion that the lack of capacity is a processing issue, pointing to the simple fact that mortuaries are doing more funerals this year than the last. She said she doesn’t have data on the percentage of funerals she handles that were coronavirus deaths.

“It’s not a processing issue. I have two hearses here. I’m doing funerals daily. I’m doing two cremations daily. I can’t keep up,” she said.

She said she’s thankful for the help but admitted she’s stressed out by the situation in general. She said helping families trying to mourn their loved ones amid the pandemic has been “horrible.”

“Funerals are horrible anyway,” she said. “It’s stressful. It’s horrible for the families. They can’t grieve they way they should grieve.”

She said it’s also taken a “toll on us as workers,” adding that she feels they’ve been forgotten in the conversation about essential employees, referring to her and her staff as “last responders.”

“Everyone is afraid of the virus. We’re afraid of the virus,” she said. “If one us was to get infected, we’d have to shut down the place.”

At Adair Funeral Homes, officials acknowledged their business has been steady and slightly above then what’s typical during past years, adding that there has not been a surge in demand for services due to coronavirus-related deaths, according to spokeswoman Lynette Viviani.

She said “thankfully” the funeral home has not had any capacity issues and currently has no plans to utilize the overflow space at the medical examiner’s office.

“We are, however, in the process of constructing an additional refrigeration facility at our Dodge Chapel, which will provide extra capacity by the end of the month. This addition is part of a long-term plan that was in place well before the COVID-19 outbreak,” Viviani said.

Hospitals: COVID-19 patients on the rise, Deaths not so much

Tucson hospitals reached by the Star on Friday said their morgue capacity has not been an issue, but that they are prepared to use the Medical Examiner’s Office in the future should the need arise.

“In line with state trends, we have seen a slight increase in deaths over the past few weeks, but we have also had many more patients recover after the lifesaving care our staff has provided to them,” said Veronica Apodaca, a spokeswoman for Northwest Medical Center and Oro Valley Hospital, in a statement.

Rebecca Ruiz McGill, a spokeswoman for Banner, said Banner still has morgue capacity at its Tucson facilities but has “contingency plans in place should we exceed that capacity.” She added that they have not seen an increase in deaths in recent weeks and do not plan to use the option provided by the county.

Tucson Medical Centeracknowledged a recent surge in COVID-19 patients, but not an increase in deaths, according to spokeswoman Angela Pittenger.

“The medical examiner opening space for storage of bodies is a contingency plan should we reach that point,” she said.

The available space in Pima County’s morgue is typically used for the work the Medical Examiner’s Office has been doing for years to identify and repatriate the remains of migrants who died crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. Remains come to the facility from several Arizona border counties, including Pima.

Since the start of 2020, the medical examiner has received 96 sets of remains believed to belong to migrants who died while crossing the border in Southern Arizona, according to an online database maintained by the humanitarian aid group Humane Borders and the Medical Examiner’s Office.

In 2019, the office received 148 sets of remains. By July 10, 2019, the office had received 77 sets of remains.

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Reporter Curt Prendergast contributed to this article.