Overworked for a month, Summanahalli crematorium to be closed for maintenance

The BBMP will close down the Summanahalli crematorium for a week from Tuesday for repair and replacement.

A staggering 610 bodies have been cremated at the facility.

A senior Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) official told DH that the furnaces have been damaged without sufficient cool-off time after the cremation of each body. The official admitted that the situation is the same in all the other crematoria in the city.

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“The resistance levels of furnaces will differ, though a few had been serviced recently,” the official said, warning that if the work overload continues in the other crematoria, they will also be shut for repair works like Summanahalli.

Maintenance staff at Summanahalli said the crematorium that once cremated 10 to 15 bodies daily is now lighting up the flames for at least 35. “The furnaces keep running (continuously) over 20 hours and the intense heat damages the brick line and transmission coils,” a staffer said.

‘House full’ board

Despite cremating bodies wherever it found space, the Chamarajpet crematorium was forced to put up the ‘house full’ board on its gate on Monday, a picture of which went viral on social media.

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Besides a few critical remarks about the facility, many admitted that the picture is a sad commentary of the city’s pathetic infrastructure, while a few others fumed over the government’s poor management of the pandemic situation.

“Never imagined such a day would come in Bengaluru,” tweeted someone.