Fairbanks Memorial Hospital has set up a mobile morgue in the parking lot to prepare for any mass casualty event.
The refrigerator container is not running yet, but can be ready in two hours, said Keith Fehr, director of emergency management for Foundation Health Partners, which operates the hospital.
“When we saw the surge with the delta variant, we decided it was time to exercise that surge morgue capacity and make sure that if we needed it, we had moved it in place, we were able to power it appropriately and just make sure that the teams knew how to use it,” he said.
Foundation Health Partners used federal COVID-19 grant money to buy the mobile refrigeration unit last year, and it’s been sitting in the south lot of Fairbanks Memorial Hospital since December 2020.