Morgue Staff to Move to Bigger, Better Quarters

It’s punch and cookies at the Ventura County morgue today.

After nearly 25 years of working in cramped, makeshift quarters, the nine employees at the medical examiner’s office will host an open house to celebrate the near completion of a $2.2-million, high-tech morgue with a view.

“It’s going to be a party . . . and everyone is invited,” said Dr. Ron O’Halloran, county medical examiner.

Given the dilapidated state of the current medical examiner’s office, the normally reserved O’Halloran has plenty to be excited about.

Never before have Ventura County’s death inspectors had so much to look forward to: state-of-the-art autopsy equipment, powerful ventilation, roomy freezers and hilltop vistas.

“Autopsies should be more timely . . . and we won’t have to store bodies in the basement hallway anymore,” O’Halloran said. “Unidentified bodies will be preserved better because we’ll have better refrigeration, and freezers, which we didn’t have before.”

The office looks into about 2,400 unnatural or suspicious deaths in the county each year. Investigators rush to death scenes to collect information and, when necessary, two doctors perform autopsies--all in the hopes of identifying the victim and the cause of death.

Although the vast majority of deaths investigated by medical examiners are from natural causes, each year the office processes about 40 homicides, 75 suicides and 100 accidental deaths.

Staffers acknowledge that a career of inspecting corpses and notifying next of kin can take its toll.

“It’s not the nicest of jobs,” investigator Zelmira Isaac said. “But it teaches you to appreciate life more.”

“The day I get used to it is the day I shouldn’t work here anymore,” added Mitch Breese, a fellow investigator.

Until the big move, O’Halloran and his staff of eight will continue to work out of a former county storage shed--just yards away in mid-town Ventura from the new site--and perform autopsies in the basement of the Ventura County Medical Center.

The unventilated and claustrophobic autopsy laboratory, just around the corner from the hospital boiler room, is so small and badly equipped that doctors can perform only one autopsy at a time. Extra bodies pile up in the hallway.

Then there is the smell.

“Smells . . . often permeate the hospital,” O’Halloran said. “We’ve had a lot of complaints from patients and nurses who said it made them nauseous.”

The maintenance shed O’Halloran and his investigators call home isn’t much better. The office--which is still without a computer--is so cramped that the pathology lab, where body organs are studied and stored, doubles as a kitchen.

Refrigerators filled with leftover lunches stand side by side with refrigerators filled with leftovers of another sort.

“Contamination isn’t a problem, but it’s not aesthetically pleasing,” O’Halloran said. “We know which refrigerator to go to for food.”

Due to be completed in two weeks, the 8,000-square-foot luxury morgue will include, among other things, a kitchen and a computer system.

Deaths will no longer have to be recorded in ink on an antiquated ledger beside the dining area.

“We’ll be moving from the Stone Age to the 20th century just before it comes to a close,” O’Halloran said.