New York City's Crumbling 'Island of The Dead' Is Unearthing Its Nameless Skeletons

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1 million souls who can't stay buried.

It's the largest mass burial site in the US, but for an estimated 1 million souls interred at New York City's 'Island of the Dead', their eternal resting place is disintegrating.

Hart Island in the Bronx, said to be the largest taxpayer-funded cemetery in the world, is crumbling in the face of longstanding erosion, and as the ground gives way, the buried remains of New York's unidentified poor are becoming exposed.

"Skeletal remains are literally just coming out of the earth," the director of non-profit Hart Island Project, Melinda Hunt, told CBS.

"Entire skeletons are sort of falling out of the hill onto the beach, and then they're washed away with the tide."

Hunt's organisation says the affected area – informally known as 'Bones Beach' – has been eroding for decades due to storms and severe weather, and after years of mismanagement by NYC's Department of Correction, which controls the site, the inevitable unearthing of human remains has reached a crisis point.


More: https://www.sciencealert.com/new-york-city-s-crumbling-island-of-the-dead-is-unearthing-its-nameless-skeletons-hart-bronx?perpetual=yes&limitstart=1