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EL DORADO — It’s something Union County has needed for a long time and something most of us don’t think about.
But if you serve as Union County coroner or work in a funeral home or morgue, you know the need for morgue coolers.
On Thursday, Young’s Funeral Directors of El Dorado donated a three-drawer body cooler to the Union County Coroner’s Office.
“There is certainly a need for this — we have needed this for years,” said Union County Coroner Curtis Butterfield, who served many years as deputy coroner before being elected for the job 10 years ago. He explained that if he investigates a death and the body needs to be sent to the crime laboratory in Little Rock, the corpse is placed in a refrigerated cooler until it can be transported.
Union County Judge Mike Loftin said the county is grateful to Young’s for the donation and explained that the county has one cooler from the old Warner Brown Hospital in El Dorado and the Medical Center of South Arkansas has a one-drawer cooler.
Butterfield said all local facilities assist each other in times of emergencies and multiple deaths and “everyone will be welcome to use our coolers.”
A morgue cooler is used for the storage of human corpses awaiting identification or removal for autopsy or disposal by burial, cremation or other method. Nowadays, corpses are refrigerated to delay composition.
David Garner, location manager for Young’s in El Dorado, said the funeral home recently purchased a new cooler and decided to donate one to the coroner’s office. “Young’s has always assisted if there is a disaster and will continue to do so,” he said, as county workers loaded the cooler onto a trailer from a warehouse used by Young’s, for transport to a county facility.
Butterfield said the building that will house the coolers will be fenced in a secure area and if, for some reason, the temperature begins to rise in the storage bin, lights will go off to alert county workers of the problem.
Years ago, a vehicle accident on U.S. 167 south of El Dorado, resulted in numerous deaths and at that time, there were not enough storage coolers in Union County to contain the bodies. Butterfield said at that time, a state agency “got on the ball and picked them up in a few hours. There were more bodies than facilities in El Dorado could handle at that time,” he said.
“One of these days, we could have a mass disaster and need the coolers,” Butterfield said, adding, “But I hope that we never have to use them.”
Janice McIntyre is the city editor of the El Dorado News-Times and may be reached at 870-862-6611 or by email at [email protected].