Local News RSS Feed
Print Story
E-mail StoryPharmacy next to county morgue plagued by stench from dead bodies
| Thursday, Apr 24 2008 3:05 PM
Last Updated: Friday, Apr 25 2008 3:12 PM
The stench of dead bodies during the summertime at the county coroner’s office is so strong that the local grand jury says it should find a new home.
Our readers recommend:
Loading Stories
• Established in 1866
• Currently at 1832 Flower St.
• North side of Kern Medical Center
• 9,000 square foot building
• Responded to the scene of 625 deaths in 2007
• Covers Kern County's 8,200 square miles including 11 cities and 2 military bases
Source: Kern County Sheriff's Department Web site, grand jury report
The coroner’s office at the Kern Medical Center was built in 1972. The office houses a morgue, two autopsy suites, two cooler rooms and a freezer room.
A pharmacy opened near the office in September 2000. Both offices share a ventilation system.
During the summer, “the pharmacy is forced to close because of odors permeating through the building,” according to the report by the grand jury.
“We've had to open the doors and open the facility to vent the smell because it was so bad,” said pharmacy technician Tina Martin. “We've had patients saying there had to be a dirty diaper around, and checking garbage cans.”
The move is on the list of projects for the county, but will not likely be done in the near future because of the bad state economy, said John Van Rensselaer, supervising deputy coroner. A move would cost “millions of dollars,” he said.
The stench from dead bodies in the summer is traveling through an old ventilation system and out to the pharmacy, said Dr. Eugene Kercher, chief medical officer at Kern Medical Center.
The pharmacy has closed down in past summers when coroners were working on badly decomposed bodies, Martin said. The smell lingered throughout the area and nearby parking lots for several hours, she said.
“That’s a smell you remember,” Martin said. “We're not used to that smell.”
This isn't the first time officials have spoken about moving the coroner's office. Martin said she recalls talks about a move when the pharmacy moved in. The smell in the last few years has not been as bad as previous years, Martin said, after a new exhaust pipe was installed.
It would not be a good idea to relocate the pharmacy because it attends to a large population of patients, including county employees, he said. There is also no extra room at the medical center to relocate the pharmacy, Kercher said.
The grand jury among other things investigates county government and cities to make sure they are being governed correctly. The committees make recommendations, no matter the price tag, as is the case with moving the coroner's office, said John Mainland, foreman of the grand jury.
“We understand that some things are way out of bounds as far as the money,” Mainland said. “We don't have much power except to make concerns public.”