the overflow morgue at my local hospital

The current crisis also hits "close to home" for me.  A few years ago, I attended the local community session regarding the Minnesota lawsuit settlement with Northern Metals Recycling.  It was a horrible settlement.  The state proved that the company was polluting, they proved that local residents were suffering asthma hospitalization and lead exposure at rates higher than anywhere else in the state, and what was their punishment?  The company was allowed to continue operating for 2 more years!  It was apparently important to government officials that the company could conveniently migrate operations to a new location on their own schedule.  (Where they promptly lit up the sky in a pungent fire that burned for days.)  It didn't matter that local residents suffered poor health for the benefit of the corporation.

The state reneged its responsibility to value citizens over corporations, so residents in my part of the city now have long term health problems due to many years of inhaling airborn pollutants like lead.  Then along comes a brand new coronavirus that ravages the lungs.

The hospital nearest to me is North Memorial.  Our Minneapolis story doesn't make headlines like the situation in New York City, but we are leveling off at a condition nearing worrisome.

"At North Memorial, we have four ICUs and they're anywhere from 13-16 beds apiece. A couple of weeks ago we were getting them one at a time and now our floor is full, and it's staying full," Turner explained. "As we move people out – and we are moving people out, people are getting better – there's more to take those beds.  Slowly, every couple days going up 10 more people. I really have this gut feeling that it's going to all of a sudden start to snowball," she added, saying she worked earlier this week and saw patients on ventilators who first arrived at the hospital in need of intubation three or four weeks ago. "I mean I worked 3-4 weeks ago and I came back this last weekend and the same people were there. That's how long they're staying on the ventilator. They're blocking up the ICUs for such a long period of time, so it's going to start snowballing faster and faster."
- https://bringmethenews.com/minnesota-news/twin-cities-icu-nurse-you-need-to-know-just-how-real-this-is

If you look at the county numbers for COVID-19, my Hennepin county currently has 1,073 cases with 113 deaths.  The 2nd highest total is Ramsey county with 219 cases and 11 deaths.  We have 10X the nearest total of deaths in the state.  I saw on a forum where someone claimed to be a nurse working at North Memorial, and she explained that the morgue has space for only 3 bodies, so they now have an overflow morgue outside the hospital.  It serves as temporary space until local mortuaries can pick up the corpses.

It's there.  I walked from my house this morning to the hospital and took this photo.  It's a refrigerated trailer blocking what would normally be the sidewalk behind the hospital.  I blame my local government for this problem.  They brushed off environmental pollution, and now locals will die from that insult to their health.

Healthy ecosystems matter.  For both the short term and the long term.  Environmental justice is a real thing.  Failure costs lives.  Pollution is bad.  Why are we still debating these points?

It should be obvious, but here we are today with an overflow morgue at my hospital, near the "bad part of town" that's been ignored for so long.