Disclaimer: This blog mail service is about the funeral industry business. It includes topics like death and cremation. If this type of subject matter makes you lot uncomfortable, nosotros suggest y'all don't continue reading.
When we inquired how Dan Flynn originally got into the death business, he laughed. "I lost a bet!" he tells us.

Dan knows a whole lot nigh expiry. As a certified expiry investigator and subject matter practiced for the Federal Regime specializing in mass fatalities, he helps write government procedures and policies on the topic.

He also owns Simply Remembered funeral abode in Santa Barbara. Dan is on the Federal Government Mass Fatality Team (office of the Department of Health & Human being Services), the first responders who get called out during big scale fatality incidents such every bit aeroplane crashes, hurricanes, etc…

Furthermore, Dan spends a lot of time giving lectures and teaching doctors and nurses virtually funeral homes and cremation procedures, providing them with in-service preparation and writing articles about the subject area thing.

Dan and his wife are originally from Missouri, where Dan had been working every bit a expiry investigator. The couple was "over Midwestern winters" and looking to move. They'd been considering options in South America when Dan discovered sunny Santa Barbara. "Here I am on a work assignment, standing in Pacific Ocean and looking at the snow capped mountains. It was admittedly breathtaking, merely like a postcard. So we moved here."

Once happily relocated to Santa Barbara, Dan started to miss — and he admits this does sound weird — working with the dead. "It'due south a fascinating concern. Unfortunately I couldn't be death investigator in California. One has to be a sheriff's deputy in California in order to exist a decease investigator, and I was besides erstwhile to become through the Police Academy. Then I started working at a "Start Call Company," using specially adapted vans, like a soccer mom, to come out offset to pick up the body and take them to where they will eventually be."

"Say you die in a car crash," Dan breaks it down for u.s.a., "you're taken to the county morgue. Then once they're washed doing their work, somebody needs to pick you up again and accept you to the mortuary. The First Call Company does this: it transports bodies."

One of the funeral homes Dan worked for equally a Starting time Call Company responder was Simply Remembered. He got to know the owner, a "very prissy lady" who had been running the business organisation with her son for about eight years. Her girl lived in Dallas, and when her daughter had a baby, she quit the funeral business organization to pursue a career every bit a full time grandma.

That's when Dan bought the Simply Remembered from her, roughly one yr ago. "I was looking for a niggling management and had been in a related field," Dan explains. So Dan added funeral dwelling possessor to his resume.

At Simply Remembered, they offering straight cremation, pregnant that they pick up the body wherever the person has passed away and put them into refrigeration while all of the required paperwork is completed prior to burying and cremation. "Our guests are going to spend at least a couple days to a calendar week in refrigeration," Dan tells us.

With directly cremation, at that place is no casket, no hearse, no embalming and no traditional service in a church. "Direct cremation is literally direct," Dan says. "Cremation is 63% of all dispositions — and growing! — in California."

Merely Remembered also offers green burials, where a body is placed into a shroud or organic coffin fabricated of rattan or woven ocean grass that and then breaks down easily equally decomposition takes place. Considering there is no embalming with cremations, the constabulary states that the body must be refrigerated within 24 hours of passing.

Some bodies can require indefinite refrigeration, for case County Public Administrator cases. In these cases, when someone dies who is either homeless or can't pay for a funeral service, the county takes over and conducts a mandated 30 days search to find next of kin — during which point the body must reside in a refrigerated space. If no next of kin is located in that time period, the county then pays for the cremation. Often these County Public Administrator case bodies will occupy space in a funeral home's refrigerator for an unabridged month.

"Refrigeration is a vital aspect to the funeral industry," Dan tells united states of america.

"The funeral industry is the perfect market for Store It Cold, with such a revolutionary product every bit the CoolBot. The lack of capacity for storage is the bane of the being of virtually funeral homes. Prior to our CoolBot, we only had the chapters to hold four 'guests' in a stand up cooler like y'all'd see in a commercial kitchen. And nosotros exceeded that chapters a while ago. The problem you traditionally run into is that a walk in cooler costs $20K and would've only given me the capacity of half-dozen to 8 people. With the 8'x12' CoolBot Walk In Libation for about $5K, I've got capacity for twenty five people. I've get the largest refrigeration facility for human remains in Southern California because of CoolBot. It is literally a game changer in the funeral industry."

The previous owner of Simply Remembered had never been able to accept on the potentially long term Public Administrator cases, because she only had the one small refrigerator that held four people. "CoolBot immune me the chapters to practise Public Admin cases because of the increased capacity. And it's definitely an account worth having, even if it simply brings enough monthly income to cover my CoolBot payment."

When Dan bought But Remembered about one yr ago, he thought he would have to spend $20K on upgrading his refrigeration situation. He spent hours searching the net before finding CoolBot.

The more he started looking into it, he was amazed.

"The divergence between the window A/C unit that runs a CoolBot and a traditional fridge, where y'all've got to have the "A" Coils and unit on the roof and demand to pay for an install, was unbelievable. With the CoolBot, my office manager and I had it together in ane afternoon, just the ii of us."

Using a CoolBot to air-condition expressionless bodies isn't an entirely unique idea. During our work with USAID, we equipped several morgues in Guatemala with CoolBots, which was well received because it'due south then affordable.

Just a couple weeks into owning his CoolBot, Dan explains how the best part is not just his significant increment in storage capacity, but the ease that a larger cooler has given him in terms of moving people around within information technology.

"Imagine my old unit of measurement," he describes to us, "a tall silver box with 4 shelves. When you opened the door, the thing was about eight feet deep. You'd open the door and have to slide the person in feet beginning. Then when you open up the door, you see the top of a human head. I of the biggest advantages to CoolBot is that at present information technology's a walk-in situation, making it much easier to movement people. Plus, you're at present continuing correct at their side rather than but looking at the top of their caput and trying to push them in and pull them out."

"The eight'x12' CoolBot Walk In Cooler can fit 20 five bodies. That may give me the largest chapters of any funeral home in California. That is a huge selling signal."

Furthermore, Dan describes to how how difficult it was to maneuver bodies around the shelves in his old refrigerator. Because the top shelf was taller than his shoulder, he would have to lift a person up off the gurney with his nothing merely his own 2 arms up and over the height of his shoulder, sliding them feet first into the cooler.

"Then only the lightest people could get on the summit shelf — and I'm a large guy, merely nevertheless! We're talking little erstwhile ladies weighing just 90 pounds or so, anybody bigger than that you tin't get them up there. This eliminated 25% of my entire chapters for storage."

Now with the CoolBot, not only can Dan walk into his refrigerator, but he can also fit a mechanical lift inside. This means he tin can get out the person on the gurney and use an electric lift to creepo information technology up. Then, not but can he get people all the way up to the top shelf easily, merely he has five shelving units inside his 12 pes space. (Plus, his shelving units are on wheels!) Dan'due south CoolBot WIC has a total of five shelving units, each able to fit five people.

"I truly think that the CoolBot is the best thing that has ever happened to funeral manufacture."

Dan recently started a regional cremation/refrigeration facility and get-go thought was, "I tin just move my CoolBot to wherever I'1000 going. The portability of it is merely amazing." Furthermore, the Mass Fatality Team that Dan is a part of, which typically has to commandeer refrigeration trucks from grocery stores during events, could absolutely use the CoolBot as an emergency response solution. "Every bit easy equally the CoolBot sets up with nothing more than an Allen wrench, information technology would be revolutionary for setting up out in the field," he suggests.

"Not to be too morbid, only at present that nosotros're seeing the Infant Boomer generation get increasingly older, the funeral home industry is going to come across a huge surge in 'clients' over the next 10 to twenty years," Dan explains to u.s.a..

"Land is and so expensive and coveted in and effectually Santa Barbara and there's no real industrial expanse in the region. Therefore, they won't let usa accept a crematory and we've got to outsource for that service. And equally people are dying at an increasing rate, more people are getting cremated. But they won't allow for more crematories. Something'south got to give. With the increase in demand without the increase in capacity, we'll have to store people for longer. The turnaround fourth dimension for getting your loved ones cremated and returned to you from the fourth dimension they laissez passer is increasing from ane calendar week to two, because you've got to await for your engagement to be cremated. Therefore, increased refrigeration capacity is essential to funeral homes."

Interesting Funeral Facts From Dan:

  1. People remember they want their gold teeth removed upon dying, but in reality the gilt teeth or fillings are worth significantly less than however much they'd paid the dentist to put them in — plus they'll have to pay a forensic dentist roughly $3K for the removal.
  2. Implants such every bit hip or knee pins are leftover subsequently the residual of the body is evaporated in the 1800°F cremation chamber, at which indicate the metal is recycled only like your beer cans would be.
  3. The "ashes" you lot receive of your loved ones post-cremation is actually the ground downward bone powder (big bones, like the femur, are all that survives the heat).
  4. The just things removed from bodies prior to cremation are medical implants that take lithium batteries in them, such as pacemakers, neurostimulators or defibrillators — otherwise these devices would explode like a bomb.
  5. Aside from large, dumbo bones, the only matter that will survive the heat of the cremation chamber is the button on your blue jeans. "Levi's Strauss got that right in 1853," says Dan.
  6. Merely four cemeteries in all of California currently permit "light-green burials" (offered at present at Merely Remembered). Why? Well, normally when you coffin a torso the casket goes inside a vault fabricated of steel or cement and is and then covered with a hat. This is so that the ground surrounding the catafalque won't settle into the pigsty as decomposition begins to occur. Simply the real reason — according to Dan — is so that the cemetery groundskeepers accept an easier time cutting the grass. Apparently this is also the reason for flat headstone markers: they're easier to mow around. Fancy that.
  7. One time upon a time, home funerals were the norm. And lately, they're making a comeback. The reason dwelling house funerals went abroad to begin with was during 1918, when the United States had about 116,000 casualties during WWI combined with a massive influenza epidemic, killing about 675,000 people. About 5% of the entire US population died this twelvemonth, and thus the modern funeral domicile manufacture was built-in, based on the overwhelming book of deaths that year. You just couldn't bury people fast enough to keep up with the amount of people dying.
  8. People choose to exist cremated with all sorts of sentimental items: photos and letters from loved ones, their favorite pair of cowboy boots, Dad'due south prized hockey jersey. The only time Dan had to say no to somebody was when a family wanted to cremate their grandma with a carton of cigarettes and a 5th of Jack Daniels. Unfortunately, Dan had to explain to the family that the liquor canteen would explode in the cremation sleeping room, and they settled on a miniature aeroplane canteen of whiskey instead.

"Every case is different, which is one of the all-time parts of this businesses," says Dan. "Different families have different wishes."

Dan's off site refrigeration facility has just been equipped with WiFi, so Dan upgraded to a CoolBot Pro in order remotely ensure that his refrigerator is ever kept beneath 50 degrees, as required past state police force.

Stay tuned for our follow up with Dan in the time to come in one case he "exam drives" his CoolBot Pro.