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By Maricel V. Cruz, Reporter
First of two parts
Today, All Saints’ Day, Rudy Villanueva will
light candles in the crematory at San Lazaro Hospital in Sta. Cruz.
It is his offering to the spirits of the people whose remains had
been reduced to ashes in the crematory’s chamber of fire.
Mang Rudy, as Villanueva is known in San Lazaro,
has been the crematory’s operator for the last 12 years. Sixty
now, Mang Rudy was a janitor in the hospital before he started work
in the crematory. He lives in a house inside the hospital compound
with his wife and 26-year-old son.
He says that he had been reluctant to accept the
job of burning cadavers. “I asked myself, ‘What am I getting
into?’” he says in Filipino.
It was pity, not fear, he felt for the people to
be cremated. He still feels the same way after all these years, so
every All Saints’ Day, he offers candles and prayers at the
crematory.
Built in 1904, the San Lazaro Crematory is the
first and oldest facility of its kind in the country. The original
structure was a wood and brick affair. It was replaced with a
concrete building in 1964, but the chamber where the cadaver is
burned was not replaced.
Roselle Garcia, officer-in-charge at the
crematory, told The Manila Times that because the facility’s
historical records are incomplete, little is known about its early
years.
What Garcia is sure of is that the crematory was
put up to cremate people who died from highly infectious diseases
such as tuberculosis, cholera, malaria, and typhoid fever (AIDS was
later included on the list) as a way of preventing an epidemic.
Victims of highly communicable diseases are
still the priority of the crematory, Garcia says. For example, a
person who dies from AIDS must be cremated within 12 hours from the
time of death.
AIDS victim and awareness activist Sarah Jane
Salazar was cremated at San Lazaro hours after she died several
years ago.
Danilo Calalang, administrative officer at the
crematory, says that before the facility was renovated in 1964,
cremations were done at night because the smoke and the smell
permeated through the neighboring buildings in the hospital
compound.
Since the renovation, a 30-foot smokestack has
been built to ensure that the ashes do not escape into the air.
Today the crematory charges a flat rate of
P6,000 for a cremation. Garcia says private crematoriums charge
higher fees and factor in other aspects such as the age and body
weight of the cadaver as well as how long the person has been dead.
Garcia says San Lazaro can be charitable to
families who want a dear departed cremated but can’t afford to pay
P6,000. But first the family has to be interviewed by the
hospital’s medical social service staff. “If we find the client
can’t really afford to pay even a single centavo, then we charge
them free,” Calalang says. “That’s how generous San Lazaro can
be.”
Once a cadaver is approved for cremation, the
family of the deceased must submit a sheaf of “supporting
documents” including birth certificate, permit to cremate from
Manila City Hall, affidavit of consent duly notarized and signed by
immediate relatives and a barangay clearance.
Officials and employees of the Department of
Health get a 50-percent discount at the San Lazaro crematory.
Garcia says the cremation process is explained
to the family of the deceased. “We explain that not all the bones
are burned. If the family wants, the bones would be mashed manually,
or we refer them to the Manila North Cemetery which does bone
grinding. Others leave the bones, and in such cases, we are the ones
who dispose them.”
Calalang says the Manila North Cemetery charges
P1,500 for grinding bones.
The Manila North Cemetery has a crematory
chamber, but since it started to malfunction three to five years
ago, it concentrated on bone grinding.
The chamber itself is a rectangular box made of
concrete and steel. At one end is a hole the size of a dish where
diesel fuel to burn the corpse is fed. At the opposite end is a
smaller observation hole for those interested enough to watch a
corpse burn.
Stacked on one side of the crematory are coffins
gathering dust and cobwebs. Calalang says the coffins were donated
to the deceased by barangay or city hall officials and were left
there after cremation.
Near the chamber is a wooden table with a
galvanized iron top. It is where the corpse is placed for a final
look or last-minute preparations before it is slid head first into
the chamber.
A heavy steel door is shut closed and locked
through a series of pulleys operated from a room right beside the
chamber.
Diesel is introduced into the chamber and
ignited. The heat inside the chamber must reach 700-800 degrees
Celsius to reduce a corpse to ashes. The temperature, however, is
not high enough to char bones, Garcia says.
How long a cremation takes depends on the
height, the time of death as well as gender of the deceased. For
those of average weight and height, and infants, it takes four
hours. Bigger and heavier cadavers take five to six hours.
The length of time between death and cremation
also matters. Calalang explains that corpses that are more than a
week-old produce chemicals that somehow retard fire, so it takes
longer to cremate them.
It takes 55 liters of diesel to completely
cremate the cadaver of a female, and 60 liters if the cadaver is a
male, Calalang says.
Because the average cremation time is four
hours, the crematory is limited to two cadavers per day. Garcia says
cremations during weekends are very rare.
The family of the deceased usually takes home
the ashes and bones but a few leave it to San Lazaro to dispose of
the remains. Garcia says the bones that are left behind are buried
near the hospital chapel or garden.
Aside from corpses, the facility is also
sometimes used to incinerate pathological wastes from government
hospitals and illegal drugs seized by government agents.
The demand for cremation appears to be
increasing, Garcia says. Last year, 10 to 12 cadavers were cremated
in San Lazaro every month. But since January the figure has risen to
15 cadavers a month.
Compared to a burial, “cremation is more
practical and reasonable” Garcia says. Funeral costs have gone up,
and so has the price of cemetery lots. Garcia says a typical burial
today would cost upwards of P20,000.
A man interviewed by The Times said he paid
P70,000 for the funeral of his grandmother in Las Piñas.
Cremations have become popular even in the
provinces, says Garcia. San Lazaro has had inquiries about its
services from as far as Mindanao, she adds.
To improve its services, San Lazaro needs to
upgrade its facilities. But that would entail a bigger budget, says
Garcia.
Two years ago, San Lazaro proposed the purchase
of a bone grinder which costs P30,000 to P40,000. The proposal was
shelved, she says.
There is also a need to fix the ceiling, replace
busted lights, and buy more ceiling fans. There is only one ceiling
fan in the facility.
Calalang says renovation and repair would be
very expensive. In the 1960s an estimated P100,000, a staggering
amount at the time, was spent to complete improvements that were
started in 1964.
Garcia says she might propose next year the
acquisition of machine-operated equipment similar to those installed
in private crematoriums.
There are more than 10 private crematoriums in
the country, the most prominent of which are the Chinese Memorial
Garden, Manila Memorial Garden and the Loyola Memorial Chapel.
As far as Garcia knows, only San Lazaro and the
Manila North Cemetery have state-run facilities for burning the
dead.
For the meantime, San Lazaro will need the
services of Mang Rudy to keep the fire burning, so to speak.
Burning people’s remains is a steady job, one
that pays Mang Rudy P9,000 a month. Work begins at 8 a.m. and he
breaks for lunch at 3 p.m.
Conclusion
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