Brazil Graveyard personnel say 600 graves dug each day
In almost three decades of working in Sao Paulo's most significant cemetery, the oldest gravediggers can't remember performing more than 10 night burials. But because the second wave of the corona virus pandemic swept across Brazil, that exception is among the most rule.
The vertiginous rise in deaths in Sao Paulo lately has forced the mayor of the country's richest & most populous city to adapt funeral likely to don't be overwhelmed. Now, furthermore to hiring more personnel and vehicles, night shifts have already been added in four of the 22 municipal cemeteries, where 600 graves are dug each day.
One of these is Vila Formosa, the major cemetery in Latin America and a showcase for the lethal cost of the pandemic in Brazil, where more than 360,000 people have previously died from Covid-19. At 6 pm the night shift clocks in. Two huge lamps powered by generators set up, illuminating the graves and filling the air with the smell of diesel.
It's the start of autumn here, and in this tree-lined cemetery on the outskirts of Sao Paulo the temperature has dropped to around 16 degrees Celsius (60 degrees Fahrenheit).
Eight gravediggers clad in white overalls, face masks and gloves get to two vans. They get out and form a circle around the graves, hands behind their backs and heads bowed to see one minute of silence. Then, they fetch their shovels and lay to rest the first deceased of the night. "Is there no relatives?" asks one.
"No. You can go ahead," answers another, clutching the deceased's documents in his hand.
In May 2020, during the first onslaught of the pandemic, the cemetery hired three excavators to dig 60 graves a day. Now, there are six machines digging 200 graves a day, say the workers, who labor until 10 pm.
