Funeral-home owner raises concerns over blackout

The owner of a funeral home in Tunapuna has said Wednesday’s blackout raised concerns for him and his business.

At around 1 pm on Wednesday, all of Trinidad lost power. The outage lasted until the early morning hours Thursday shortly after midnight. The sudden loss of power led to the early closure of businesses and schools.

On Wednesday evening, TTEC’s general manager Kelvin Ramsook said the island-wide blackout was caused by a fault developed in one of the major circuits which triggered its independent stations to shut down.

On Friday morning Nicholas St Rose of St Rose Funeral Home said his business was affected by the blackout as he did not have a generator.

St Rose was speaking during an interview on radio station I95 with hosts Dale Enoch and Tony Lee.

St Rose said without electricity, bodies cannot be embalmed.

“It was one of the worst experiences I ever had since I’ve been in the funeral industry. I had to buy a generator. It was really upsetting.”

He said because covid19 bodies cannot be embalmed, nothing could be done with them during the blackout.

“I had to put them aside and try our best not to open the fridge because there was nothing I could do with them. We can’t prepare them or anything.”

St Rose also said on the radio programme that, during the blackout, the funeral home moved five bodies, two from homes for the elderly and three from hospitals.

He alleged that those people had died after ventilators went down during the blackout.

“We moved a guy on Thursday morning. He suffered with asthma and his pump could not work.”

He claimed other funeral homes had similar experiences of receiving bodies during the blackout who had died owing to equipment failure.

On Thursday, Newsday contacted CEO of the Eastern Regional Health Authority (ERHA) Ronald Tsoi-A-Fatt and president of the TT Registered Nurses Association (TTRNA) Idi Stuart and asked how the health sector was affected by Wednesday's blackout.

Both said that back-up generators kept health centres going during the 11-hour islandwide blackout on Wednesday.

Tsoi-A-Fatt said all the facilities in his district have generators which kicked in when the regular electrical power went out.

Stuart also said no major issues were reported to him by nurses following yesterday’s event.

“For the most part, most facilities, hospitals, had generators,” he said. “I’ve had no reports of those generators failing.”

Newsday was also unable to find any reports of deaths at public or private medical facilities that were caused by electrical power failure.

When Newsday contacted St Rose on Friday morning, he would not verify his earlier claims and was unwilling to reveal the hospitals or names of the families allegedly involved.

He said, however, some of the equipment at his funeral home, including a printer, were damaged and had to be replaced.

St Rose also told Newsday his funeral home did not have problems with the bodies during the blackout even though he was initially without a generator. He said the bodies were embalmed as soon they arrived and his staff was instructed to keep the fridge door closed to preserve them.

Contacted for comment, Tyler Dennie of Dennie’s Funeral Home, said his business had no issues during the blackout because it had its own generator.

He said, during the blackout, his funeral home moved three bodies with no issues.

He said power outages are rarely an issue. “The country has a very steady current supply. When current goes, we won’t put on the generator right away. We give it two hours or so. Because our refrigerators are so good, it holds.”

Dennie said he was not aware of any other business within his industry having major problems during Wednesday's blackout.