Blue, who weighed 457 pounds, has been sitting in a morgue for more than a month as officials dithered over the cost of her cremation. Dallas County and the crematorium it contracts with disagreed over the extra dollar per pound charged for bodies weighing more than 300.
Blue's son, Sam Roberts, said he believed his mother had been cremated under a county indigent plan until he called to get a death certificate.
"That's when I was informed that for the last two months she's been sitting in the deep freeze at the medical examiner's office because the crematorium that does business for the county says, 'Oh well, she's too big (and) too fat," he told WFAA-TV on Wednesday.
Extra costs for extra weight is normal in the crematory business, said Jack Springer, executive director of the Cremation Association of North America.
"It is a much more involved process, and it takes quite a bit more time," Springer said. "You have to do it slower. You have to have somebody there all the time."
He said some crematory businesses even refuse to handle obese bodies.
"A lot of them will not do it at all," Springer said. "It's not digging a bigger hole to put the body in; it really is a much longer process."
Wow. . . interesting! I never really thought of cremation in the terms of how much a person weighs. I guess the process is a lot more involved than I would have imagined.
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