Bird flu burials at VA cemeteries

The VA buries more than 250 veterans and eligible family members a day _ about 93,000 a year. It operates cemeteries in 39 states and Puerto Rico.

Those burials could stop or be put on hold during a pandemic, presumably even as the tally of dead surges, according to a VA plan that lays out how it will cope with an influenza outbreak. The government is preparing for a worst-case scenario of nearly 2 million deaths in the United States in a pandemic.

The VA would continue treating veterans at its 150-plus hospitals and hundreds of smaller clinics. It also would provide back-up care to active duty military, as well as non-veterans if necessary, according to the plan posted on the department's Web site.

As for the dead, the VA said it may have to store bodies in refrigerated warehouses or trucks outfitted as temporary morgues.

If forced to close cemeteries because of staffing shortages or other reasons, the plan calls for VA employees to reroute phones and contact funeral homes and the next-of-kin to "reschedule" burials.

As much as 40 percent of the national work force could be off the job in a pandemic, according to federal estimates.

"They're raising a common concern: Where are the workers going to come from?" said Robert Fells, external chief operating officer and general counsel for the International Cemetery and Funeral Association.

During the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, the dead were sometimes buried in trenches, Fells said. Should another pandemic strike, it could take days to bury the dead, and perhaps only then in mass or temporary graves, he added.

"Will that be necessary? It may be and we have to be prepared if things get that bad," Fells said.

The VA acknowledges cemeteries will have to plan ways of allocating staff and plots for "significant numbers of burials if closure and rescheduling is not an adequate response," according to the plan.