This story was produced in collaboration with THE CITY and Columbia Journalism Faculty’s Stabile Middle for Investigative Journalism, as a part
This story was produced in collaboration with THE CITY and Columbia Journalism Faculty’s Stabile Middle for Investigative Journalism, as a part of “MISSING THEM,” THE CITY’s ongoing collaborative challenge to recollect each New Yorker killed by Covid-19. The reporters on this story from THE CITY and Stabile are: Haidee Chu, Jacob Geanous, Téa Kvetenadze, Cassidy Jensen, Josh Service provider, Savannah Tryens-Fernandes, and Megan Zerez.
Hart Island, a small piece of land off the Bronx in New York Metropolis, resurfaced in nationwide headlines in April 2020, when New York Metropolis turned the epicenter of the Covid-19 pandemic within the US. Information footage of the island’s cemetery confirmed trenches being crammed with pine coffins, sending shockwaves world wide. However these mass burials happening in the course of the pandemic are simply the latest in Hart Island’s lengthy historical past.
Hart Island’s potter’s discipline cemetery dates again to 1869, and for over 150 years has served as a burial floor for over 1 million New Yorkers. Through the years, infrastructure issues and a scarcity of dependable public entry have earned Hart Island a tainted popularity.
A 2021 evaluation by Columbia Journalism Faculty’s Stabile Middle and THE CITY discovered that over 2,300 New Yorkers had been buried on Hart Island in 2020. That’s extra burials than any yr in the course of the AIDS epidemic, one other latest well being disaster.
Stabile and THE CITY additionally discovered that New York Metropolis is on tempo to bury one in 10 Covid-19 victims on the island.
The evaluation exhibits who’s extra prone to be buried on Hart Island: Black and Latinx residents, front-line employees, and people with little entry to well being care.
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