Fremont County Coroner Mark Stratmoen hosted local media Friday to view the new temporary body storage cooler that has been placed in a garage at the county’s Riverton Shop on Airport Hill. The new facility is housed inside a remodeled shipping container. One look inside and there is no evidence of the container’s previous use.
Two layers of insulation was added in the interior, top, sides and bottom, a new floor was installed and a wooden wainscoting was added around the interior. Lighting was also added, along with a ramp to allow a gurney easy access to the inside. On one end are two air conditioning units, controlled by thermostats to keep the air inside the cooler at a constant 38 degrees when in use. Otherwise the temperature of the cooler is kept at 55 degrees. “The beauty of this design is that if the air conditioners fail, we can just go downtown and buy another one. It’s very cost effective,” he said.
The entire project came in around the budgeted $7,000 amount. “It’s much better quality and much less costly than if we had gone out and purchased a commercial unit,” he said. “The interior finishing was done in house.”
Stratmoen said the container was delivered to the courthouse in Lander and J.R. Oakley and his staff worked on it when they had time. When mostly completed, the container was moved to Riverton for the final touches.
Stratmoen also noted that the new cooler can be moved. “It’s on skids and if we need to move it, we can,” he said.
The coroner said the need for the new cooler is a result of the county’s changing demographics and propensity for tragic vehicle multi-fatality crashes here. “The county has an older population with more deaths and there are times the local funeral homes do not have room for another deceased person,” he said. Stratmoen said the county morgue in Lander has space for only three deceased individuals while the new temporary storage cooler can hold from 8 to 12 bodies. He also said the new facility would be used if there was a multi-fatality industrial accident or an incident such as a multi-fatality bus or RV crash.