NUECES COUNTY, Texas — There was a surprise waiting for Nueces County Judge Barbara Canales and the medical examiner's office after a morgue trailer sent by the state arrived.
The trailer was supposed to be able to store 50 bodies. Instead, officials with the ME's office said they could only store four to eight bodies in there.
"Well I am making the requisite calls to see where our trailer is," Canales said. "I am grateful for any asset or resource they want to send to us in the meantime but we are going to be looking for the trailer that we think has a larger capability."
Judge Canales said our huge surge in COVID cases and deaths is the reason why she asked for the trailer. Also, the two mobile morgue trailers that were back here had to be sent off for repairs.
"We can't afford to have any of them, you know, not properly functioning electrically, so obviously, we've made it a high priority," Canales said. "We said 'Please do everything you can to remediate these trailers as quickly as possible.'"
While the trailer isn't exactly what the County was expecting, it will be an asset that can be used while those other two trailers are repaired.
"This other one will just be there for overflow until we can get the right one brought to our region," Canales said.
Another problem that the ME's office has with this trailer is that its body lift won't raise up high enough to use the top shelves. The judge said it's just another problem to have to solve in this non-stop world of one COVID crisis after another.