The graves of 128 victims are marked with a simple white plastic cross, bearing only their names and a plot number.
Those buried in Campo 87, a section of the Maggiore cemetery in Milan designated for coronavirus victims whose bodies went unclaimed, came from overwhelmed hospitals and morgues during the peak of Italy’s pandemic. Some had died while in residential care; others at home alone.
Milan’s mayor, Beppe Sala, filmed a tribute from the site in April. “We have lost so many,” he said in a video posted to Facebook. “In some cases, moving forward has been even more tragic as some died without anybody … in this space there are those whose remains were not claimed by a family member.”
However, it has emerged more recently that Campo 87 also contains the graves of people who did have family and who were buried there by mistake.
Their relatives face a battle to retrieve the bodies due to a law preventing the remains of people who die of an infectious disease being exhumed for two years.
Milan and the surrounding Lombardy region have been at the centre of the pandemic, accounting for almost half of Italy’s 33,964 coronavirus deaths and over 90,000 infections.
“During the emergency it was very intense and chaotic, and certainly errors would have been made,” said Walter Marini, a lawyer representing the family of Vittorio Domeniconi, who died aged 90. “But now that the situation has improved, families should be able to reclaim the bodies and give their loved ones a proper funeral.”
Domeniconi, a former policeman and bus driver, was among Milan’s first Covid-19 victims when he died in hospital on 5 March, days before the entire country went into lockdown. Ordinarily, his family would have had 30 days to claim his body and confirm funeral arrangements. But on 13 March, Sala introduced a measure reducing the timeframe to five days, owing to the escalation in deaths, overburdened morgues and requirement to bury victims of infectious disease quickly.
Domeniconi’s wife and two children were told about his death, and had left their contact details with the hospital’s mortuary. All three then became ill with the virus. It wasn’t until 20 March, when they called Milan’s civic morgue, where Domeniconi’s body had been moved, to make arrangements for his cremation and ashes to be taken to the family chapel in another Lombardy town, that they discovered he was about to be buried in Campo 87.
“They called several public offices to try and stop it but were told it was not possible as the process was already advanced,” said Marini. “I’ve written several emails to Milan’s council to at least try to resolve the two-year situation, but was denied an appointment.”
Three other families are so far known to be in a similar situation. Gianni Fossati, a well-known businessman, died in hospital on 24 March and was buried at Campo 87 despite leaving a wife, who was recovering from the virus in the same hospital at the time of his death, and a brother, Vando, who also lives in Milan.
Vando learned of his brother’s death through acquaintances, and like many other families who lost loved ones amid the chaos of the emergency, he had to go in search of his brother’s body. With the help of a Milan councillor, Lorenzo Lipparini, also a family friend, he eventually discovered that Fossati had been buried in Campo 87 on 4 April.
“I can only imagine what was happening at the time in the hospitals. They were overwhelmed, with insufficient staff, and may have only done a cursory search for family,” said Lipparini. “The council did the burials based on information that the bodies were unclaimed.”
A combination of the pressure in hospitals and relatives either falling ill or in lockdown outside Milan contributed to the erroneous burials.
“Hospitals did try to trace relatives, but maybe staff didn’t have time to make 100 calls,” said Roberta Cocco, Milan’s councillor for civic services. “In many cases, the five-day rule was surpassed to give more time for families to come forward.”
The cost of the burials at Campo 87, which has enough space for 680 graves, was paid for by Milan authorities and, in the event of an exhumation, Cocco said the council would also pay the bill.
An office has been set up to help deal with families with relatives at Campo 87, but the possibility of retrieving the remains before two years is slim.
“It is very difficult and we don’t have a magic wand,” said Cocco. “The law says that in the situation of an epidemic exhumations can’t be done as there is the possibility of infection. All we can do is be close to families and guarantee their relatives a dignified burial.”
The council plans for the area to eventually be covered with grass and for each grave to have a marble tombstone.
“We are thinking about how this space could become a memorial site for this terrible tragedy,” said Cocco. “This isn’t a graveyard for the abandoned – it is a graveyard for those who in that moment didn’t have family or close people who could take care of the burial.”
But the tribute is unlikely to bring comfort to grieving families wanting to give their loved ones a funeral.
“My clients do not want to make a lawsuit against the council – that is not the point – they just want to be able to retrieve the body. They want to move forward, like we all do, but they can’t without being able to give their loved one a proper funeral.”
source https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/10/it-was-chaotic-the-families-trying-to-claim-covid-19-victims-from-milan-cemetery
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