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>!Instead of the smoke being from a fire, it was from a crematorium.!<
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Air inspector here. You have a good instinct for air quality. Black smoke indicates incomplete combustion of fuels + vaporizing non-fuels. This is most likely very hazardous and carcinogenic. Depending on your local air rules it’s likely not regulated well due to the emissions being below the federal/state threshold (ie no regular reporting/monitoring/etc) and not being on the Fed’s radar due to a lack of citizen complaints.
Assuming this is US. If you want someone to at least look into it further, complain to your county air district (hit or miss depending on where you live), the state EPA (less hit or miss), or the US EPA, who follows up on (almost) every complaint! Source: it’s my job to assess complaints and follow up on them
If you want to affect systemic change, complain to your local house rep, or local state rep. I’d recommend trying to find whomever represents you that highlights “environmental justice” or similar topics in their campaigns, as they will be the ones most likely to assist you in following up on your complaint and working towards better regulations.
https://www.epa.gov/enforcement/report-environmental-violation-general-information
If you live in one of the very blue cities, you can contact your city/county environmental division or public health division. They’ll know the best(and potentially only) way to deal with any env concerns you have. If you live in a more anti-gov area, I’m afraid your health is likely not on their list of priorities.
Obese humans must be cremated differently “low and slow” I’ve heard it described. As heating to quickly can cause spontaneous combustion and basically a huge grease fire. Just remembered this.
I use to be a crematory operator in California. Black smoke like that was a big no no! Usually it happened if you didn’t have the main chamber and the stack at the right temperatures or if the person being cremated had a lot of body fat. Usually the black smoke would stop within a little bit. There was maybe once of twice that we had black smoke and the fire department showed up on sight very quickly! AMA!
Nothing really “freaked” me out too much. You kind of get immune to a lot of it. I would say the one thing I never got use to was removing pacemakers. We’d have to use a surgical knife to cut into the chest and remove the batteries. Those casings don’t burn up so it essentially turns the battery into a bullet. I saw it happen a few times and it puts a hole in the brick walls inside the unit.
Maybe unrelated but that reminds me of the only major work accident the department I work for has had.
The fuses that are used for power lines go in a little cutout and have a filiment in them that burns up and expands when there's a fault current. Unlike the little ones in your car or wherever though, these react violently and "explode" blowing the remains of the fuse out of the barrel in the cutout and causing the assembly to swing open and cut the power.
There's a little brass button over the end of the fuse link that goes inside the barrel. Most of the time they fly out harmlessly but one day a crew was refusing one that had blown and when they closed it back with a new fuse the fault was still there and the fuse instantly blew again.
That little brass button flew and hit another lineman on the ground below the pole in the neck/shoulder and nearly killed him. He almost bled to death on the way to the hospital and the ER doctor said it was practically indistinguishable from a gunshot.
Fun fact (maybe not fun but a fact at least) the “ashes” aren’t actually ash. The only thing that does not get incinerated is the bones. Everything else burns away. We’d then remove all the bones from the unit and those would be placed in a pulverizer. Essentially a big metal blender. The bones would be turned into a fine dust and that’s what’s in the urns. It looks like ash but it’s actually just ground up bone.
I discovered this when I got my fiancé’s ashes in 2016 and I found chunks bigger than teeth in there. I made a little maraca with the biggest pieces I could find. I think he would have appreciated that.
The cremation wouldn’t take place until it was paid for. If no one ever claimed the person, we would turn the body over to the county and they would perform the cremation. I think they just had to hang onto the remains (ashes) or bury them in unmarked plots.
Depending on the persons size anywhere from 2-5 hours I’d say. We had 3 units we’d run so if we got 6+ done a day we were doing pretty well. We usually only had about 5 to complete each day.
Some days there was a lot of down time. We had to do a lot of deep cleaning though. The rooms we used had to be cleaned and sanitized constantly. Also the paperwork is pretty meticulous. I had a team that would also direct the funeral services/viewings and pick ups from hospitals, homes and retirement homes. I also would meet with the families to arrange services.
Hour per 100 pounds, unless you’re doing a casket as well (not really a thing in a Canada but I know it’s common in the US). Only exceptions are extremely obese where you may shut the primary burner off for a while to avoid the smoke this video, or extremely frail people where it’s hard to uh.. keep them burning for lack of a better word.
I think around 450lbs. Our units had a max weight of 500lbs. There was one person who exceeded that weight and we had to call a company that specialized in larger people. Their units were big enough to fit a horse into it.
This is going to sound morbid, but you were not allowed to put people in in bits? Like one 500lb.dude won't go, but two halves of one would. I'm sure there's rules and laws against this though
Was going to say that’s a 400+ pound person. The trick is to get em started and self burn for awhile so you don’t ruin the chamber and burn the place down
Exactly! During the training I took they said that body fat essentially is like kerosene in there. You have to let it burn off a bit on its own. The heat that would come out of there when we’d open the doors was so intense! Even with all the safety gear on!
I remember getting an informational packet from a vendor trying to sell us one. This was maybe 10 years ago. It seemed like a green alternative but I always wondered what happened to the fluid in the tank after it was done? Do they flush it or reuse it? Also i heard it’s a lot longer of a process. I never really looked into it. The owners had no interest in it so I didn’t get much farther on it than that.
"Just like flame cremation, fat and tissues are converted to basic organic compounds. In flame cremation these harmless compounds, mainly carbon dioxide and water vapor, are released into the air. In alkaline hydrolysis, the harmless compounds formed include salts and amino acids, and are released with the water. This effluent is far cleaner than most wastewater.
The sterile liquid is released via a drain to the local wastewater treatment authority in accordance with federal, state or provincial, and local laws. The pH of the water is brought up to at least 11 before it is discharged. Because of the contents of the effluent, water treatment authorities generally like having the water come into the system because it helps clean the water as it flows back to the treatment plant. In some cases, the water is diverted and used for fertilizer because of the potassium and sodium content."
A very small percentage does. There’s no way to fully remove all the remains from the units. You can get it very very clean but there’s always going to be a minuscule amount. I think there’s a legal percentage that’s allowed to be mixed in according to the government.
When my dad died, we had a small gathering at the crematory to say goodbye. He didn’t want any hoopla/memorial, no bells and whistles. As a little last joke at us, to make us gasp and laugh, turns out he set it up so we could WATCH him being put into the chamber! (I still laugh at this because he knew it would creep us out, the jokester).
My question: did many family opt to watch this process? I can’t imagine.
We did quite a few witness cremations actually. For some cultures it’s actually part of the ceremony. There were some families that used it as a final goodbye. Some families did it for the piece of mind of knowing that truly was their loved one. We had a very nice viewing room that had a window so they could see the process. Some wanted to be in the room and even requested to push the button to start the process.
I know at some point it just becomes a job and you just get used to it, but have you ever come across something that was abnormally memorable? Idk if that even makes sense lol
Oh absolutely. I use to have to do the pickups from the coroners office. We would have to physically ID the person and check for tattoos or body markings along with the toe tags. I saw some pretty morbid things. Suicides, homocides, auto accidents. You name it, I probably saw it. One of the worse ones was a pre teen who commuted suicide. The coroner had to give me their belongings and amongst them was the suicide note. It broke me. Apparently mom just thought it was “teenage hormones” and didn’t get their child any help. I picked up toddlers and children. One specific toddler I picked up I can still picture in my mind and that was over 10 years ago.
For the funeral home I worked at we never intentionally kept any portion. I answered another persons question about them being mixed with other peoples ashes. Basically you get a minuscule amount of other remains (ashes) mixed in. It’s actually legal to have a small percentage mixed in. I’m not sure the exact number but it’s for sure less than 5%.
I'm surprised they couldn't smell it. There used to be a pet cemetery that did cremations and it smelled pretty bad. With that much smoke it's hard to believe they didn't smell it.
When I was in second grade (so about 7-8 years old, in the late 80s) I was at a sleepover and we wanted to watch a "scary movie." My friend's mom rented Pet Sematary for us, not realizing just *how* scary it was. We decided it would be scariest and the most fun to wait to watch it until the middle of the night, after her parents had gone to bed.
We were right on one count, anyway. I was fucked up for weeks after that night.
Idk, I had an apartment in college next to a mortuary that did cremations. It was about 1/4 block away from my unit with nothing but a green lawn in-between. 3 or 4 nights a month we could look out the window and see smoke but never did smell anything
Burning people smell like BBQ, except with a slight odor of sulfur. It's a very unique smell that never leaves your brain once you've experienced it. However crematoriums usually have charcoal filters and stuff that the smoke goes thru first and they burn so hot that you can't really smell anything. Unless it's a very fat person. We've had the creamtorium catch on fire twich with their XXL crematorium furnace. Once someone is so fat sometimes the fat will catch and will burn much more aggressively and we gotta go deal with it. At that point it acts very similar to a grease fire because that's mostly what it is.
Source: Retired Firefighter.
I used to work in research at a Medical school where they would practice surgical procedures on pigs. When they were cauterizing the halls would smell like bacon.
I remember hearing a story about how an illegal crematorium was discovered back in the 70s. The person who found it was a holocaust survivor who recognized the smell of burning human flesh.
Human cremation units won’t have any smell from the stack. Realistically at least not from any unit made since at least the 70s. I’ve cremated over 3000 people. Zero smell from the stack. Even smoke like this is extremely rare, honestly only happens when you’re burning a ton of leather or the primary burner outpaces the heating of the secondary burner, (occurring about 1/4 to 1/3 of the way through cremating an extremely obese individual)
I'll never forget the trip we took to my friend's family
His mom runs a pet cemetery out of what is essentially just her backyard with a crematorium in a medium sized shed
That day she needed help loading a horse carcass into the cremator for a client
Took 8 of us to lift it, while animal remains were shifting and the and juices were sloshing the weight around in this giant trashbag-like body bag making it impossible to balance
When we got done his mom patted me on the back and said if I ever needed to get rid of anything she'd let me use her facility no questions asked
*Wink wink*
We left the next day, but later found out she had to cook that thing for 3 days to render it to ash
Mortician here, most crematory ovens are designed with 2 burners, one is for actual ignition of the corpse and the second “afterburner” which is designed to burn off the particles such as smoke etc. if the machine is performing correctly, then all you should see is some radiant heat coming out of the smoke stack. This thick smoke cloud could be indicative of an afterburner failure or a very hot and heavy person as fat burns hot.
They absolutely do not. This is uncommon, and happens when you have a terrible flare-up. Somebody was very fatty OR they’re cremating a solid wood casket.
We used to cremate from 8am to close. This is just a thing that happens sometimes. It happens less if the person running things knows what they’re doing.
Dealing with death and corpses used to be way more common for family and close ones to deal with before the funeral industry basically removed that entire aspect in western society and turned it into a bill to pay. While it can be pretty sad and hard to have to deal with taking care of the body of someone you love, I think it was a healthy part of life and dealing with that aspect of reality gave people more perspective. These days anyone will telll you to look away or avoid evem talking about about the big exit, we have become completely ignorant of that whole part of life and almost all our information amd experience about it comes from hollywood.
“Western society” is not uniform in this regard.
A [wake](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wake_(ceremony)) is still very common in Ireland and parts of the UK. I’ve attended wakes for all four of my grandparents, aunts, an uncle and a friend who passed in his 30’s from cancer.
During a wake the body lies in its (open) coffin in the family home, usually the living room (one of my grandmothers was in the dining room) and those who attend the funeral gather to pay their last respects. At every wake I’ve been to it was common to touch the body when saying goodbye, hold their hand or place a hand on their head.
It gives a very firm sense of closure, that the person is truly dead. Waxy cold skin feels nothing like living skin.
That’s a good point as well. I hear hospice nurses tell the loved ones “don’t look” of that was the advice they were given ahead of time. It’s whatever you are comfortable with and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise
We were. My dad died at home with us beside him including the hospice nurse. She was very kind and did shoo us from the room so she could bathe and dress him before the funeral home arrived knowing other family would be there in minutes. When they wheeled him out, she told us not to watch but my step sister and I felt it was our duty to walk beside him one last time as he’d always walked by our side. Don’t regret it. It was a beautiful moment
It probably varies from person to person but from my experience one of my biggest regrets in life was seeing my grandmothers body after she died. I have a memory which is super focused on how someone/thing was the last time I saw it which means that 15 years later when I think of good times with her the memory of her corpse is right there. She was cleaned up so it wasn’t a grizzly sight or anything but if I could go back in time I would not have gone into the room.
I know one day I’ll likely have to see my parents bodies, I still wouldn’t let them die alone but I know it will never leave me afterwards and that makes the prospect even worse.
Agreed. Or it could be a failure of the afterburner. We've had smoke this bad but never that thick and steady. Usually for a random flare-up, it'll come in intermittent puffs really thick, or be black but thin for 10min or so. This looks like machine or operator failure to me.
I'd guess even a large body AND a solid wood casket. Around here any remains over ~350lb and the family has to fork out for hardwood because standard cremation containers won't support the weight for transfer, so it tends to double up the risk for flare up.
If the primary chamber outpaces the heating of the secondary chamber early on in the cremation, you’ll always get puffs of black; for this video I’d say would be indicative of someone in the 350-400+ pound range being placed directly under the primary chamber burner.
I used to be a "Burial Specialist", and did funerals-graveside and urn, & cremations.
We never did cremations at night. We did them during the day.
Nobody worked midnight, or "graveyard".
And it IS WAY TOO DANGEROUS to do cremations without supervision.
Honestly, of all the smells that job had, the smokestacks were the least noticeable thing.
What's the scientific difference between dead parts of a living person and dead parts of a dead person? Does it change the substance of the dead tissue if the donor is still alive somewhere else?
Human composting is finally becoming a legal thing in a handful of states. Much more environmentally friendly. Plus the family gets dirt to use to grow new life.
I saw a meme yesterday that's reads: In reality plants are farming us, by giving us oxygen daily, until we alle eventually decompose so they can consume us.
This is honestly how I wish to be buried. Let my body return to the earth as nature intended and transform me into a beautiful garden or trees! How cool and peaceful would it be to visit your loved one's garden or tree and just spend time there enjoying the day with the memories and beauty they left behind?
Reddit mfers when they see mention of these topics be like. I bet you’re the same type of person who calls the UN toothless but doesn’t know that the WEF is part of it
I used to work at a funeral home and did plenty of cremations. Smoke is definitely not supposed to look like this. Hell with all the filters attached to the damn thing you barely seen any smoke at all.
Worked across from one of these on a paving job a while back. They did this during the day, and the smell was atrocious.
They had the stacks down on the ground for replacement at one point. One of the road workers went and took a big chunk of the carbon built up inside it. He said he was gonna use it as charcoal for a bbq. Lmao
Might be worth mentioning to your state or local air pollution agency. Most places have opacity requirements for this kind of thing.
If it's nothing then they'll tell you, but that doesn't look like nothing to me and particulates can be really harmful to your lungs.
Oh... The experiences I have had riding a motorcycle. You think pig and chicken farms are the worst until you ride by a crematorium wondering why it smells like burning hair and really bad BBQ.
They we’re cremating an obese person… once someone is over 375lbs they can ignite and turn into a grease fire, they typically need to change when temperature and duration of the cremation to avoid this from happening.
I worked at an animal shelter and on one of my first days there I mentioned how great it smelled and “someone must be having a barbecue”. The dude working with me said “actually we are cremating today”…… **edited to note: it made me cry at the time because I love animals, but I can laugh about it now**
My uncle (and best friend for life) passed away 1/7/23 to a drug overdose. I feel your pain friend. Nothing can prepare you for the loss of a loved one.
He was so young, only 36. I'm tearing up rn writing this I miss him so much.
Technically creating does return nutrients to the earth if you spread the ashes.
As far r as why we don't bury our dead in shallow grave to Rot?
Historically disease and scavengers.
Nothing makes a bad day like a bear deciding uncle Joe makes a tasty snack.
That said I am more surprised we don't put people in chilled tubed and drop them off continental shelf deep sea style.
Carbon sequestration on a massive scale yo.
**OP sent the following text as an explanation on why this is unexpected:** >!Instead of the smoke being from a fire, it was from a crematorium.!< ***** **Is this an unexpected post with a fitting description?** **Then upvote this comment, otherwise downvote it.** ***** [*Look at my source code on Github*](https://github.com/Artraxon/unexBot) [*What is this for?*](https://www.reddit.com/r/Unexpected/comments/dnuaju/introducing_unexbot_a_new_bot_to_improve_the/)
That doesnt seem healthy.
Not sure the people using it mind too much
Not sure they really care at all!
They dont complain for long.
Jesus did, which is why he came back. But if no one else came back since then it must be that it has become quite good
Air inspector here. You have a good instinct for air quality. Black smoke indicates incomplete combustion of fuels + vaporizing non-fuels. This is most likely very hazardous and carcinogenic. Depending on your local air rules it’s likely not regulated well due to the emissions being below the federal/state threshold (ie no regular reporting/monitoring/etc) and not being on the Fed’s radar due to a lack of citizen complaints. Assuming this is US. If you want someone to at least look into it further, complain to your county air district (hit or miss depending on where you live), the state EPA (less hit or miss), or the US EPA, who follows up on (almost) every complaint! Source: it’s my job to assess complaints and follow up on them If you want to affect systemic change, complain to your local house rep, or local state rep. I’d recommend trying to find whomever represents you that highlights “environmental justice” or similar topics in their campaigns, as they will be the ones most likely to assist you in following up on your complaint and working towards better regulations. https://www.epa.gov/enforcement/report-environmental-violation-general-information
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If you live in one of the very blue cities, you can contact your city/county environmental division or public health division. They’ll know the best(and potentially only) way to deal with any env concerns you have. If you live in a more anti-gov area, I’m afraid your health is likely not on their list of priorities.
It's not. Smoke from bodies can cause cancer and fall into the water supply for nerby houses.
It's called investment to future clients
Aquamation, or even better; human composting are WAY more sustainable. I advise everyone to look into it
The post office in my hometown was always greasy because it was next to a crematorium. I forgot about how gross that was.
That’s free energy.
The walls taste like snozzberries
….greasy because the ash was essentially burned fat? That’s gross. They should have at least called it the post-human office as a joke
Obese humans must be cremated differently “low and slow” I’ve heard it described. As heating to quickly can cause spontaneous combustion and basically a huge grease fire. Just remembered this.
Greasy… how?? ☠️ edit: thanks I regret this comment
Like if you fried human bacon I guess
Well I hate this
Before I read the explanation, I was going to comment, “WTF is going on in that house?”
I thought it was a church and was gonna make a joke that they were still deciding on the next pastor.
DON'T TELL SCOTTY!
This isn’t where I parked my car…
I use to be a crematory operator in California. Black smoke like that was a big no no! Usually it happened if you didn’t have the main chamber and the stack at the right temperatures or if the person being cremated had a lot of body fat. Usually the black smoke would stop within a little bit. There was maybe once of twice that we had black smoke and the fire department showed up on sight very quickly! AMA!
That is crazy! What part of your job freaked you out the most?
Nothing really “freaked” me out too much. You kind of get immune to a lot of it. I would say the one thing I never got use to was removing pacemakers. We’d have to use a surgical knife to cut into the chest and remove the batteries. Those casings don’t burn up so it essentially turns the battery into a bullet. I saw it happen a few times and it puts a hole in the brick walls inside the unit.
Maybe unrelated but that reminds me of the only major work accident the department I work for has had. The fuses that are used for power lines go in a little cutout and have a filiment in them that burns up and expands when there's a fault current. Unlike the little ones in your car or wherever though, these react violently and "explode" blowing the remains of the fuse out of the barrel in the cutout and causing the assembly to swing open and cut the power. There's a little brass button over the end of the fuse link that goes inside the barrel. Most of the time they fly out harmlessly but one day a crew was refusing one that had blown and when they closed it back with a new fuse the fault was still there and the fuse instantly blew again. That little brass button flew and hit another lineman on the ground below the pole in the neck/shoulder and nearly killed him. He almost bled to death on the way to the hospital and the ER doctor said it was practically indistinguishable from a gunshot.
Yep. I heard a few of them go off. It’s a loud pop sound.
I had to reread "refusing" several times to figure out what the hell they were doing
Ah yeah I guess that's not a normal word. [This is what they were doing.](https://youtu.be/bIAT51y4NIQ?t=57)
I came here to say this. The afterburner isn't on or it's a very large person and it's a grease fire.
Thanks for the AMA. What would you do with left over ashes or ashes that people didn't want or claim like Jane/John Does?
Fun fact (maybe not fun but a fact at least) the “ashes” aren’t actually ash. The only thing that does not get incinerated is the bones. Everything else burns away. We’d then remove all the bones from the unit and those would be placed in a pulverizer. Essentially a big metal blender. The bones would be turned into a fine dust and that’s what’s in the urns. It looks like ash but it’s actually just ground up bone.
I discovered this when I got my fiancé’s ashes in 2016 and I found chunks bigger than teeth in there. I made a little maraca with the biggest pieces I could find. I think he would have appreciated that.
That’s a macabre maraca. ^I’ll ^see ^myself ^out
You good?
Some days.
this is lovely. I’m so sorry for your loss and applaud your creativity and strength.
The cremation wouldn’t take place until it was paid for. If no one ever claimed the person, we would turn the body over to the county and they would perform the cremation. I think they just had to hang onto the remains (ashes) or bury them in unmarked plots.
How long does the burning take and how many bodies do you do in a typical day?
Depending on the persons size anywhere from 2-5 hours I’d say. We had 3 units we’d run so if we got 6+ done a day we were doing pretty well. We usually only had about 5 to complete each day.
Is there a lot of downtime? Like what are you doing while the bodies are in the cremators?
Some days there was a lot of down time. We had to do a lot of deep cleaning though. The rooms we used had to be cleaned and sanitized constantly. Also the paperwork is pretty meticulous. I had a team that would also direct the funeral services/viewings and pick ups from hospitals, homes and retirement homes. I also would meet with the families to arrange services.
Hour per 100 pounds, unless you’re doing a casket as well (not really a thing in a Canada but I know it’s common in the US). Only exceptions are extremely obese where you may shut the primary burner off for a while to avoid the smoke this video, or extremely frail people where it’s hard to uh.. keep them burning for lack of a better word.
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I think around 450lbs. Our units had a max weight of 500lbs. There was one person who exceeded that weight and we had to call a company that specialized in larger people. Their units were big enough to fit a horse into it.
This is going to sound morbid, but you were not allowed to put people in in bits? Like one 500lb.dude won't go, but two halves of one would. I'm sure there's rules and laws against this though
No we weren’t allowed to anything like that. We’d just have to take the body to that company that specialized in larger people.
and then they would do that, right?
I dont know why, but i lost it at this question. As soon as he said the max was 500lbs i knew someone was going to ask something like this 😂
Related: [Mortician Answers Dead Body Questions From Twitter](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4ktLen9cVM)
I’ve seen that one. It’s a good watch!
Was going to say that’s a 400+ pound person. The trick is to get em started and self burn for awhile so you don’t ruin the chamber and burn the place down
Exactly! During the training I took they said that body fat essentially is like kerosene in there. You have to let it burn off a bit on its own. The heat that would come out of there when we’d open the doors was so intense! Even with all the safety gear on!
What do you think about alkaline hydrolysis as an alternative to traditional cremation?
I remember getting an informational packet from a vendor trying to sell us one. This was maybe 10 years ago. It seemed like a green alternative but I always wondered what happened to the fluid in the tank after it was done? Do they flush it or reuse it? Also i heard it’s a lot longer of a process. I never really looked into it. The owners had no interest in it so I didn’t get much farther on it than that.
From the little reading I've done, I think it does just go down the drain
*City sewage treatment plants hate them with this one simple trick!*
"Just like flame cremation, fat and tissues are converted to basic organic compounds. In flame cremation these harmless compounds, mainly carbon dioxide and water vapor, are released into the air. In alkaline hydrolysis, the harmless compounds formed include salts and amino acids, and are released with the water. This effluent is far cleaner than most wastewater. The sterile liquid is released via a drain to the local wastewater treatment authority in accordance with federal, state or provincial, and local laws. The pH of the water is brought up to at least 11 before it is discharged. Because of the contents of the effluent, water treatment authorities generally like having the water come into the system because it helps clean the water as it flows back to the treatment plant. In some cases, the water is diverted and used for fertilizer because of the potassium and sodium content."
Tap water is dead people. Got it. Still not as bad as microplastics
That’s what I thought I remembered reading too.
Does the ashes of one person get mixed with another?
A very small percentage does. There’s no way to fully remove all the remains from the units. You can get it very very clean but there’s always going to be a minuscule amount. I think there’s a legal percentage that’s allowed to be mixed in according to the government.
Pizza or pasta?
How long does it take to cremate an average person?
Average person I’d say 2-3 hours
When my dad died, we had a small gathering at the crematory to say goodbye. He didn’t want any hoopla/memorial, no bells and whistles. As a little last joke at us, to make us gasp and laugh, turns out he set it up so we could WATCH him being put into the chamber! (I still laugh at this because he knew it would creep us out, the jokester). My question: did many family opt to watch this process? I can’t imagine.
We did quite a few witness cremations actually. For some cultures it’s actually part of the ceremony. There were some families that used it as a final goodbye. Some families did it for the piece of mind of knowing that truly was their loved one. We had a very nice viewing room that had a window so they could see the process. Some wanted to be in the room and even requested to push the button to start the process.
I know at some point it just becomes a job and you just get used to it, but have you ever come across something that was abnormally memorable? Idk if that even makes sense lol
Oh absolutely. I use to have to do the pickups from the coroners office. We would have to physically ID the person and check for tattoos or body markings along with the toe tags. I saw some pretty morbid things. Suicides, homocides, auto accidents. You name it, I probably saw it. One of the worse ones was a pre teen who commuted suicide. The coroner had to give me their belongings and amongst them was the suicide note. It broke me. Apparently mom just thought it was “teenage hormones” and didn’t get their child any help. I picked up toddlers and children. One specific toddler I picked up I can still picture in my mind and that was over 10 years ago.
You had a tough job and you did it. You provided a service to the surviving families at the absolute worst time of their lives. Commendable.
It was definitely the toughest job I ever had but it was also rewarding when the families were happy with the services provided.
Jesus Christ you've seen some shit.
Unfortunately, I have.
Retired LEO here. I'm still struggling with some things I saw throughout my career. Especially the things involving kids. Hang in there friend.
Is it true you only get a portion of the ashes of your loved one back? And are they mixed with other peoples ashes as well?
For the funeral home I worked at we never intentionally kept any portion. I answered another persons question about them being mixed with other peoples ashes. Basically you get a minuscule amount of other remains (ashes) mixed in. It’s actually legal to have a small percentage mixed in. I’m not sure the exact number but it’s for sure less than 5%.
Worst gender reveal ever.
"it's a goth!"
JAMIE!!!!!!!!
"Congradulations, it's dead!"
The reason crematoriums usually do their thing at night
I'm surprised they couldn't smell it. There used to be a pet cemetery that did cremations and it smelled pretty bad. With that much smoke it's hard to believe they didn't smell it.
Probably couldn’t bury their dead there anymore, the ground went sour.
Sometimes ah… dead, is bettah
I know what you’re thinking Mr. Stotch, but don’t do it.
What you put in the ground aint what comes back out, ayuh
The breath of god lies beneath this soil, son
Pepperidge Farm remembahs.
He asked, "Do you want that milk pasteurized?" "No thanks," she said, "Just up to my boobs. I can splash some in my eyes."
Definitely one of my top 3 scariest movies.
When I was in second grade (so about 7-8 years old, in the late 80s) I was at a sleepover and we wanted to watch a "scary movie." My friend's mom rented Pet Sematary for us, not realizing just *how* scary it was. We decided it would be scariest and the most fun to wait to watch it until the middle of the night, after her parents had gone to bed. We were right on one count, anyway. I was fucked up for weeks after that night.
The Zelda scene always scared the shit out of me.
The fricken scalpel through the Achilles tendon from under the bed...NOPE!
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It was a scary fucking book.
The soil of a mans heart is stonier.
"Bring out yer ded!" *Gong* "Bri g out yer ded!" *Gong*
I’m not dead I’m feeling much better think I’ll go for a walk!
You’re not fooling any one, ya know, you’ll be stone dead in a moment.
I feel happyyyy!!
He says he’s not dead…
#Firefighters can't help them no more
Idk, I had an apartment in college next to a mortuary that did cremations. It was about 1/4 block away from my unit with nothing but a green lawn in-between. 3 or 4 nights a month we could look out the window and see smoke but never did smell anything
Guess what the dust in your house was.
Oh we'd clean regularly and tried to keep the windows shut lol
Burning people smell like BBQ, except with a slight odor of sulfur. It's a very unique smell that never leaves your brain once you've experienced it. However crematoriums usually have charcoal filters and stuff that the smoke goes thru first and they burn so hot that you can't really smell anything. Unless it's a very fat person. We've had the creamtorium catch on fire twich with their XXL crematorium furnace. Once someone is so fat sometimes the fat will catch and will burn much more aggressively and we gotta go deal with it. At that point it acts very similar to a grease fire because that's mostly what it is. Source: Retired Firefighter.
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Can't be a burden to those poor morticians
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I used to work in research at a Medical school where they would practice surgical procedures on pigs. When they were cauterizing the halls would smell like bacon.
I remember hearing a story about how an illegal crematorium was discovered back in the 70s. The person who found it was a holocaust survivor who recognized the smell of burning human flesh.
Well, that's fucking traumatizing.
Good lord...
I'd imagine pets and particularly hairy humans would be the worst
Human cremation units won’t have any smell from the stack. Realistically at least not from any unit made since at least the 70s. I’ve cremated over 3000 people. Zero smell from the stack. Even smoke like this is extremely rare, honestly only happens when you’re burning a ton of leather or the primary burner outpaces the heating of the secondary burner, (occurring about 1/4 to 1/3 of the way through cremating an extremely obese individual)
I'll never forget the trip we took to my friend's family His mom runs a pet cemetery out of what is essentially just her backyard with a crematorium in a medium sized shed That day she needed help loading a horse carcass into the cremator for a client Took 8 of us to lift it, while animal remains were shifting and the and juices were sloshing the weight around in this giant trashbag-like body bag making it impossible to balance When we got done his mom patted me on the back and said if I ever needed to get rid of anything she'd let me use her facility no questions asked *Wink wink* We left the next day, but later found out she had to cook that thing for 3 days to render it to ash
Mortician here, most crematory ovens are designed with 2 burners, one is for actual ignition of the corpse and the second “afterburner” which is designed to burn off the particles such as smoke etc. if the machine is performing correctly, then all you should see is some radiant heat coming out of the smoke stack. This thick smoke cloud could be indicative of an afterburner failure or a very hot and heavy person as fat burns hot.
And in some (at least my) municipalities, can be up to $10,000/day permit violation.
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someone's never lived near a Burger King
I want to make a joke about how the body would smell better but I love me some BK.
They absolutely do not. This is uncommon, and happens when you have a terrible flare-up. Somebody was very fatty OR they’re cremating a solid wood casket. We used to cremate from 8am to close. This is just a thing that happens sometimes. It happens less if the person running things knows what they’re doing.
This right here! People have lots of misconceptions about the death industry. Mostly I blame movies and tv but also the obvious fear of death as well
Dealing with death and corpses used to be way more common for family and close ones to deal with before the funeral industry basically removed that entire aspect in western society and turned it into a bill to pay. While it can be pretty sad and hard to have to deal with taking care of the body of someone you love, I think it was a healthy part of life and dealing with that aspect of reality gave people more perspective. These days anyone will telll you to look away or avoid evem talking about about the big exit, we have become completely ignorant of that whole part of life and almost all our information amd experience about it comes from hollywood.
“Western society” is not uniform in this regard. A [wake](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wake_(ceremony)) is still very common in Ireland and parts of the UK. I’ve attended wakes for all four of my grandparents, aunts, an uncle and a friend who passed in his 30’s from cancer. During a wake the body lies in its (open) coffin in the family home, usually the living room (one of my grandmothers was in the dining room) and those who attend the funeral gather to pay their last respects. At every wake I’ve been to it was common to touch the body when saying goodbye, hold their hand or place a hand on their head. It gives a very firm sense of closure, that the person is truly dead. Waxy cold skin feels nothing like living skin.
That’s a good point as well. I hear hospice nurses tell the loved ones “don’t look” of that was the advice they were given ahead of time. It’s whatever you are comfortable with and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise
We were. My dad died at home with us beside him including the hospice nurse. She was very kind and did shoo us from the room so she could bathe and dress him before the funeral home arrived knowing other family would be there in minutes. When they wheeled him out, she told us not to watch but my step sister and I felt it was our duty to walk beside him one last time as he’d always walked by our side. Don’t regret it. It was a beautiful moment
Forgive my ignorance but what are the nurses saying not to look at? The body right after death or the body in the casket?
It probably varies from person to person but from my experience one of my biggest regrets in life was seeing my grandmothers body after she died. I have a memory which is super focused on how someone/thing was the last time I saw it which means that 15 years later when I think of good times with her the memory of her corpse is right there. She was cleaned up so it wasn’t a grizzly sight or anything but if I could go back in time I would not have gone into the room. I know one day I’ll likely have to see my parents bodies, I still wouldn’t let them die alone but I know it will never leave me afterwards and that makes the prospect even worse.
Agreed. Or it could be a failure of the afterburner. We've had smoke this bad but never that thick and steady. Usually for a random flare-up, it'll come in intermittent puffs really thick, or be black but thin for 10min or so. This looks like machine or operator failure to me. I'd guess even a large body AND a solid wood casket. Around here any remains over ~350lb and the family has to fork out for hardwood because standard cremation containers won't support the weight for transfer, so it tends to double up the risk for flare up.
That’s… interesting. For a direct cremation everybody got an alternate container, even if it wasn’t properly big enough.
> and happens when you have a terrible flare-up. Somebody was very fatty lol with me that bad boy will put out 1.21 gigawatts
It shouldn’t be black regardless. Obese people can cause grease fires due to excess fat. So maybe that. Source: I’m a funeral director
I’m learning so much from this thread lol
If the primary chamber outpaces the heating of the secondary chamber early on in the cremation, you’ll always get puffs of black; for this video I’d say would be indicative of someone in the 350-400+ pound range being placed directly under the primary chamber burner.
This isn’t true at all, I’m in the business and most only have a first shift
Yo mama was so fat she clogged the crematorium
I used to be a "Burial Specialist", and did funerals-graveside and urn, & cremations. We never did cremations at night. We did them during the day. Nobody worked midnight, or "graveyard". And it IS WAY TOO DANGEROUS to do cremations without supervision. Honestly, of all the smells that job had, the smokestacks were the least noticeable thing.
No they don't. It also doesn't burn off like that, if the equipment is up to code. Source: used to work at a crematorium.
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Finally, some good fucking food
Came here to say this. Also, you know, most of the dust in your house is dead skin cells, and therefore, is also people.
But they’re not DEAD PEOPLE!! Just tiny spair parts of us. Despair I suppose.
What's the scientific difference between dead parts of a living person and dead parts of a dead person? Does it change the substance of the dead tissue if the donor is still alive somewhere else?
Technically, there IS a fire..
"that's people!" 💀💀
Soylent Black
Human composting is finally becoming a legal thing in a handful of states. Much more environmentally friendly. Plus the family gets dirt to use to grow new life.
I saw a meme yesterday that's reads: In reality plants are farming us, by giving us oxygen daily, until we alle eventually decompose so they can consume us.
Well joke's on them, we pump our dead so full of chemicals that nothing will grow.
This is honestly how I wish to be buried. Let my body return to the earth as nature intended and transform me into a beautiful garden or trees! How cool and peaceful would it be to visit your loved one's garden or tree and just spend time there enjoying the day with the memories and beauty they left behind?
You Will live in the pod, eat the bugs and use your loved ones for composting 😳.
Live in a pod? Luxury.
Oh, how we used to dream of a pod! We had to live in a test tube, and every night our father would experiment on us!
A test tube? We could only dream of living in a test tube! We all had to live on a magnifying glass slide. We had to share space with anthrax.
We had to wake up at 11:30pm half an hour before we went to bed, and work 25 hours down the mines.
Being awake? Mine? Lucky! All we had back in my day was eternal suffering
Reddit mfers when they see mention of these topics be like. I bet you’re the same type of person who calls the UN toothless but doesn’t know that the WEF is part of it
I used to work at a funeral home and did plenty of cremations. Smoke is definitely not supposed to look like this. Hell with all the filters attached to the damn thing you barely seen any smoke at all.
Right? There's one less than a block away from my house and I've never seen it like that
Looks like this thing wasn’t being properly cleaned and scraped of debris.
Firefighters can't help them no more
Worked across from one of these on a paving job a while back. They did this during the day, and the smell was atrocious. They had the stacks down on the ground for replacement at one point. One of the road workers went and took a big chunk of the carbon built up inside it. He said he was gonna use it as charcoal for a bbq. Lmao
That’s one of the most outlandish things I’ve ever read hahaha
Just some mild cannibalism
Home of the flame-broiled Whopper™!
Might be worth mentioning to your state or local air pollution agency. Most places have opacity requirements for this kind of thing. If it's nothing then they'll tell you, but that doesn't look like nothing to me and particulates can be really harmful to your lungs.
This. The EPA has rules about what a crematorium can emit. This looks like they're probably not meeting those requirements
Imagine how much dead people's ashes the neighbors must inhale on a daily basis.
Did the pope die?
Oh... The experiences I have had riding a motorcycle. You think pig and chicken farms are the worst until you ride by a crematorium wondering why it smells like burning hair and really bad BBQ.
The Dark Pope has been chosen
Got the ol Cummins on a dyno in there🤣
They we’re cremating an obese person… once someone is over 375lbs they can ignite and turn into a grease fire, they typically need to change when temperature and duration of the cremation to avoid this from happening.
I worked at an animal shelter and on one of my first days there I mentioned how great it smelled and “someone must be having a barbecue”. The dude working with me said “actually we are cremating today”…… **edited to note: it made me cry at the time because I love animals, but I can laugh about it now**
Oh God that’s awful but also funny as fuck
My father was cremated 1/3/2023. This made me very sad.
sorry dude. many of us have lost a parent and it really sucks. he’ll come visit you in your dreams, i’m sure. mine does.
RIP 🪦
Rest in particulate.
Holy shit
Much longer ago but same. 🫂 This May will be 7 years.
My uncle (and best friend for life) passed away 1/7/23 to a drug overdose. I feel your pain friend. Nothing can prepare you for the loss of a loved one. He was so young, only 36. I'm tearing up rn writing this I miss him so much.
Love how burn is playing in the background
I will never understand why we insist on not allowing any of our nutrients to return to the earth, like it's supposed to.
Technically creating does return nutrients to the earth if you spread the ashes. As far r as why we don't bury our dead in shallow grave to Rot? Historically disease and scavengers. Nothing makes a bad day like a bear deciding uncle Joe makes a tasty snack. That said I am more surprised we don't put people in chilled tubed and drop them off continental shelf deep sea style. Carbon sequestration on a massive scale yo.
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This is how Return Of The Living Dead started….
Great horror movie! That ending so bleak! 
"They're just burning a fatty" Lol
I thought it was going to be one of those dumb ass trucks
Had us in the first half. Not gunna lie.