Greenwood, the largest cemetery in New York, has reached its maximum capacity after cremations more than doubled, and burials increased fivefold, as the bodies of the victims of the "Corona emerging" epidemic (Covid-19) poured over.
The graves had prepared to receive a large number of dead during the Ebola epidemic between 2013 and 2016, but the United States escaped it.
In the third week of March, the Covid-19 pandemic reached the cemetery in Brooklyn, which was established in 1838, to become one of the most beautiful cemeteries in the city, stretching over 193 hectares and overlooking the New York Bay, in which the musician Leonard Bernstein and the painter Jean-Michel Basquiat lie.
"It started to cremate," said deputy cemetery chief and operations officer Eric Barna. "On some days, the number exceeded" four or five times "the usual size.
Currently, 130 to 140 bodies are burned in the cemetery, compared to 60 in normal times.
Barna, who is a member of the Metropolitan Cemetery Association that includes New York graves including Long Island in the east and Westchester in the north, says "it's not just about Greenwood."
"Everyone is receiving similar numbers. ... I have heard that some burial offices are looking outside of New York State (...) We have reached a point where the system can no longer manage such a volume in such a short time as this," he explains.