Indigent burials on the rise

Counties assume responsibility when a deceased person’s next of kin cannot be located and no one will step up to pay burial costs.

There has been about one case of indigent burial per year since Dale County Commission Chairman Mark Blankenship has been commission chairman, he told commissioners at the meeting Feb. 12. “This year we’ve already had three.”

The recently restructured Dale County morgue in part of the county annex building near the Dale County Jail was toured by the commissioners and representatives from the Dale County funeral homes following the commission meeting.

The commission had approved spending up to $4,500 to reconfigure part of the county annex building to house a three-drawer morgue unit at the last commission meeting in 2018.

Dale County Coroner Woody Hilbolt had previously told the commission that he had received a three drawer morgue unit from the Fayette County administrator, at no charge to Dale County.

The annex morgue unit will serve as an alternate to the mobile morgue trailer that has been used by the county since its purchase in 2017.

At the Dale County Commission meeting Aug. 8, 2017 the commission approved the purchase of a Mortuary Enhanced Remains Cooling System from Belton, South Carolina-based Mortuary Response Solutions, a division of Worldwide Disaster Response Group, to replace the “extremely old” Dale County morgue that was then housed at Dale Medical Center in Ozark.

At the commission meeting July 25, 2017 Blankenship told commissioners that the morgue cooling system at the hospital was inadequate and that the DMC Administrator asked him to find alternate accommodations as soon as possible.

At that time, Blankenship said that local funeral homes were not interested in providing morgue service for the county and that the state forensics lab was not an option.

The mobile morgue trailer will still be used in the event of a mass casualty.

In other business, the commission awarded the roadside trash pickup contract to the single bidder, Wiregrass Rehabilitation Center, at a price of $20.91 per man hour.

The next meeting of the Dale County Commission is Tuesday, March 12, at the Dale County Government Building in Ozark. A work session begins at 10 a.m. and is followed immediately by a voting meeting. Both meetings are open to the public.