SLO mortuary sees dramatic increase in demand due to COVID deaths: ‘This is scary to us’
As co-owner of San Luis Obispo’s Reis Family Mortuary & Crematory, Kirk Reis has gotten to know multiple generations of families who have lost loved ones.
Reis, a licensed funeral director and crematory manager, said he values the personal connections he and his family have made with locals going through difficult times.
Lately, the 62-year-old mortician said the demand for Reis Family Mortuary’s services have spiked in connection to a surge in local coronavirus-related deaths. Reis said his staff’s workload is about “three times the normal amount,” straining the business’s ability to operate.
“In the first five to six months of the pandemic, we weren’t getting a lot of calls for COVID-related deaths,” said Reis, whose staff includes his wife, daughter and daughter’s boyfriend. “But over the past month or two, they have really increased dramatically.”
Reis said his family’s mortuary used to go several days without a call for funeral arrangements. Now, he added, he gets seven to eight calls or so in a day — most of them related to deaths due to coronavirus.
“Some days it can be difficult to spend the typical amount of time we normally would with families,” Reis said. “And I like to have the face to face, which is far more personal, but right now that’s not possible with COVID and we’re having to do a lot more by phone.”
Reis Family Mortuary & Crematory and another San Luis Obispo business, Wheeler-Smith Mortuary, lobbied the city to expand mortuary operating hours, which were previously limited to weekdays from 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.
On Jan. 8, the city effectively removed restrictions on mortuaries’ hours of operation “due to increased demand and projections of additional post-holiday deaths,” San Luis Obispo officials said.
“I can’t think of a clearer sign of the times than this,” San Luis Obispo city manager Derek Johnson said in a news release.
As of Friday morning, 125 people have died locally due to the novel coronavirus since March 2020, according to the San Luis Obispo County Public Health Department.
Coronavirus impacts Santa Maria refrigerator storage business
Local mortuaries and crematories aren’t the only local businesses impacted by the increase in coronavirus-related deaths.
Jay Brooks, general manager of Mid-State Containers in Santa Maria, said that the business never used to receive calls from funeral homes and cremation services. Instead, it typically serves businesses in industries such as agriculture, construction or party services.
Now, he said, Mid-State Containers is getting requests for refrigerated containers from mortuaries around the county seeking extra space to store human remains.
“A lot of these calls are from mortuaries or hospitals in bigger cities like Phoenix and Las Vegas, where there are tons of people and high densities,” Brooks said. “There’s a critical mass where they need an outside refrigerator.”
At its current rate, Brooks said Mid-State Containers could run out of containers in two months. On Friday, the company had about 50 to 60 containers left for rent, he said.
According to Brooks, Mid-State Containers provides 40-foot-long refrigerated containers that require significant power to operate. The units typically go behind hospitals and mortuaries, where the public don’t see them, he said.
Brooks said he hasn’t received calls from facilities in San Luis Obispo County.
But a former Kuehl-Nicolay Funeral Home staff member who spoke on condition on anonymity said that the Paso Robles business is using an outdoor refrigerator to store remains. The Texas-based corporation that owns the funeral home, as well as mortuary businesses in Los Osos and Atascadero, hadn’t respond to requests for comment by early Friday afternoon.
Brooks added he recently received a call from the California Office of Emergency Management asking about the availability of Mid-State Containers units, warning the demand could increase 10% to 20% over the next six weeks.
SLO mortician talks about COVID-19 challenges
Reis Family Mortuary uses a body removal service that responds to calls after deaths, whether they occur in the hospital or at home.
“Typically, they can get to a call in about three to four hours, where before they’d be able to go right away,” Reis said. “But that’s a lot better than some cities where bodies can’t be picked up for days in some cases.”
In other cities, people have had to try to keep bodies cool using dry ice or other materials until professionals can come, ABC News reported.
Reis said that keeping staff members safe is a challenge when cremating and embalming bodies during the COVID-19 pandemic.
He noted that a coronavirus-positive person can pass on the virus through bodily fluids even after death, so undertakers need to be careful.
“We wear gowns and gloves and all kinds of protective equipment,” Reis said. “It’s a risk, and we can’t afford to get sick ourselves. We all have expertise that you can’t easily replace by bringing somebody new on.”
Typically, cremation takes three days to a week, Reis said.
COVID-19 has also changed the way funeral services are handled, Reis said, noting that groups of 40 people no longer gather in his business’s chapel to pay their respects.
Now services are held outdoors and only attended by the closest relatives, he said, or they’re being postponed.
“I’ve never seen anything in my lifetime like this,” Reis said. “This is scary to us. Some of these families I’ve known all my life. Some I don’t know. I know what people go through when they lose a loved one, and it’s a lot. You do the best we can for them.”
This story was originally published January 15, 2021 at 1:49 PM.
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