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Medical Examiner’s office gets help keeping up with rising death tolls

A new exterior cooler will help the District 4 Medical Examiner's office in Jacksonville keep up with rising death rates, caused by a population boom and the opioid epidemic, according to Tim Crutchfield, operations director.

A new exterior cooler will help the District 4 Medical Examiner’s office in Jacksonville keep up with rising death rates, caused by a population boom and the opioid epidemic, according to Tim Crutchfield, operations director.

Workers unloaded the cooler and placed it in the back of the building Tuesday morning.

"To help facilitate the storage of our decedents here at the medical examiner's office,” Crutchfield said.

The office on Jefferson street serves Duval, Nassau, Clay, Columbia and Hamilton counties, where people are dying faster than the office can process them.

The building only has enough space for 42 recently deceased, which may have been enough when the facility was built in the 1960s, but not today, Crutchfield said.

"The growth in the population coupled with the opioid epidemic, we are seeing an increase in autopsies,” Crutchfield said. “Therefore we need additional space.”

Jacksonville Fire and Rescue says it responds to an overdose call about once every two hours.

The department saw a 61 percent jump in overdose calls from 2015 to 2016, and the trend is continuing to rise.

More and more emergency responders are now carrying Narcan, which can revive overdose victims.

While city and state governments are working on legislation to fight the opioid epidemic, but as death tolls continue to rise, the exterior expansion at the office of the medical examiner will at least help the department keep up.

“It'll give us approximately 40 more spaces for decedents which in essence pretty much doubles our capacity for this office.

The cooler cost approximately $206,000 and is meant to be a temporary solution until the actual building can be expanded.

Workers will start putting the exterior unit together Wednesday morning.

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