A massive fire at a crematorium in Virginia was sparked after a furnace got too hot during the cremation of a 500-pound body said fire officials Wednesday.
The body of an “average-size adult” takes two to three hours to cremate in a 2,000-degree crematory, according to the Cremation Society of Virginia‘s website. Larger bodies take longer.
“When the person is too heavy, the guy running the crematory needs to not have continuous heat coming down on the body. Otherwise it would get too hot,” Emory Sanford , with Windsor Crematory in Brunswick, Virginia, said.
Sanford, who said he had been in the business nearly 10 years, added a person who weighed 300 pounds or more could take four to five hours to cremate.
fox13seattle.com
Fifty-two crematorium ovens, including these, were used to burn the bodies of up to 6,000 people every 24 hours during the operation of Auschwitz-Birkenau gas chambers.
en.wikipedia.org
bodies (≈4000lbs) per hour
How did the Germans do it?