County's masterplan to deal with flu pandemic

Plans are being drafted to cope with an estimated 11,298 deaths across Lincolnshire if a flu pandemic takes hold.

Among the measures already outlined to deal with such a devastating wave of sickness are re-used grave plots, cold body stores and even ways of dissolving corpses in alkaline.

This "worst case scenario", outlined in a new report, examines how a high mortality rate over the course of a 15-week epidemic might affect county services.

But Lincolnshire's head of emergency planning, David Powell, says that the county's burial and cremation services can cope with all but the most catastrophic situations.

Hospitals could be allowed to use refrigerated vehicles to store bodies.

More grave diggers would be employed, including using local authority staff, and mechanical diggers used to dig plots at a faster rate, it says.

Funeral directors would train non-funeral staff to operate a service.

The length of cremation services would be shortened to allow more each day.

More than one person could be placed in a grave or untended graves re-used.

Mr Powell said: "We have got the capacity within Lincolnshire to deal with an outbreak but it would be irresponsible not to think about how we would plan for the very worst scenario.

"But the plan recognises the absolute importance of protecting the dignity of the grieving and burial process for relatives."

Click here to read the full emergency plan.

More on this story in Saturday's Lincolnshire Echo.