Charles Kong Soo

Bel­groves Fu­ner­al Home's new high-tech, space-sav­ing bur­ial sys­tem is the so­lu­tion to the prob­lem of chron­ic over­crowd­ing in ceme­ter­ies. Mak­ing this sug­ges­tion was the com­pa­ny's chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Kei­th Bel­grove. The $17 mil­lion bur­ial fa­cil­i­ty, Or­ange Grove Memo­r­i­al Gar­dens, at 10 Or­ange Grove Road, Trinci­ty, which took four years to con­struct, has the ca­pac­i­ty to hold 5,472 graves and al­so an un­lim­it­ed num­ber of cre­ma­tion urns in one square acre of land.

"In tra­di­tion­al pub­lic ceme­ter­ies, al­most five acres of land is nec­es­sary to ac­com­mo­date that num­ber," Bel­grove said. "Tech­nol­o­gy al­lows us to ac­com­plish that feat in one acre. "We cre­at­ed a new con­cept in ceme­ter­ies, Or­ange Grove Memo­r­i­al Gar­dens, be­cause look­ing at the prob­lems such as lim­it­ed bur­ial space, we re­alised that it is so chron­ic, the re­solve to fix it will come slow­ly, as such we've cre­at­ed the an­swer to that," he re­cent­ly told the T&T?Guardian.

The new bur­ial method, called a lawn crypt sys­tem, is de­signed to max­imise land use in the ceme­tery by stack­ing four cas­kets in an un­der­ground crypt. The de­sign con­sists of a large, com­plete­ly sealed, wa­ter­tight con­crete walled box struc­ture ex­tend­ing 12 feet un­der­ground, with drainage pipes 15 feet down be­low, eight-inch re­in­forced con­crete base pad, six-inch re­in­forced side­walls and two-inch re­in­forced in­ter­nal pan­els.

Once low­ered in­to the grave, the cof­fin is cov­ered with two inch­es of soil, be­fore a four-inch, re­in­forced grass-cov­ered con­crete lid is used to seal the grave by a spe­cial­ly de­signed lift­ing ma­chine. Bel­grove said the new method cre­at­ed a to­tal­ly green ceme­tery, as it was com­plete­ly sealed and en­cased in con­crete pre­vent­ing any harm­ful chem­i­cals or ef­flu­ence, such as em­balm­ing flu­ids like formalde­hyde, heavy met­als used in cof­fin and cas­ket con­struc­tion, and the de­com­po­si­tion of hu­man re­mains from leach­ing in­to the soil and con­t­a­m­i­nat­ing the ground wa­ter.

"What we have done here is make a to­tal­ly green, to­tal­ly sound, en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly-friend­ly ceme­tery that does not im­pact the wa­ter ta­ble in a neg­a­tive way," he said. "Six­ty per cent of the pop­u­la­tion lives on the East-West cor­ri­dor. Fif­teen years ago, WASA did a test on the potable wa­ter across the East-West Cor­ri­dor and they found that the ni­trate lev­el in the wa­ter was at the max­i­mum al­low­able in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dard set by the World Heath Or­gan­i­sa­tion (WHO) safe­ty lim­it of 50 mg/l.

"In the tra­di­tion­al ceme­ter­ies the ni­trate lev­el will be high in the ground wa­ter be­cause of our re­cy­cling of the graves every five to sev­en years. "The end re­sult of the de­com­po­si­tion process is ni­trate and that is very high in our potable wa­ter in the ceme­ter­ies along the East-West Cor­ri­dor.

"That is a di­rect re­sult of our con­tin­u­ous re­bury­ing in the graves across the ceme­ter­ies be­cause the fi­nal end prod­uct, ni­trate, be­come more con­cen­trat­ed in the ar­eas of ceme­ter­ies and im­pact the potable wa­ter ta­ble." Bel­grove said when he first ap­plied to WASA for con­nec­tions for the ceme­tery, he was ini­tial­ly turned down be­cause of the high ni­trate con­cen­tra­tion in the wa­ter test and he was told the au­thor­i­ty did not want an­oth­er ceme­tery in the area.

He said the Gov­ern­ment was prob­a­bly not aware of the sit­u­a­tion in or­der to put cor­rec­tive mea­sures in­to place. An­oth­er con­cern of Bel­grove's was what he de­scribed as the "cul­tur­al prac­tices" in the tra­di­tion­al man­age­ment of ceme­ter­ies which was ac­tu­al­ly des­e­cra­tion of graves when they were opened af­ter five to sev­en years and the re­mains were ca­su­al­ly scat­tered and thrown back in the grave with the dirt.

His com­pa­ny, how­ev­er, en­sures the re­mains are placed at a greater depth and "with the great­est amount of rev­er­ence." He said he want­ed to change the im­age of ceme­ter­ies in T&T from be­ing char­ac­terised as cold, de­press­ing and de­cay­ing to more light, airy and invit­ing spaces where fam­i­lies can hold pic­nics on the lawn near the graves of their de­ceased rel­a­tives' on their birth­days and in the gaze­bo, in a safe and se­cure en­vi­ron­ment as is done in his ceme­tery.

As­sis­tant CEO, Mer­cedes, Bel­grove's daugh­ter, said that the new ceme­tery was the on­ly one in the coun­try that pro­vid­ed 24-hour se­cu­ri­ty and was lit at night. She said events such as All Saints and the view­ing of the Christ­mas creche were planned for own­ers and their fam­i­lies and were held on the well-man­i­cured, aes­thet­i­cal­ly pleas­ing ceme­tery grounds.

Mer­cedes added peo­ple were en­cour­aged to come and spend time and pay homage to their de­part­ed rel­a­tives and bring their chil­dren along. The large pond was stocked with fish to keep the chil­dren en­ter­tained and they were giv­en some Hillar­ies to take home.

The mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar all-in-one con­ve­nience fu­ner­al home/ceme­tery/cre­ma­to­ri­um fa­cil­i­ty more re­sem­bles a lux­u­ri­ous gar­den land­scape and makes ex­ten­sive use of im­port­ed Car­rera Blan­co mar­ble from Italy and gran­ite from Chi­na in the ceme­tery's or­nate walk­ways, curve­walls, bench­es, foun­tain, fish pond, colum­baria, gaze­bo, mon­u­ments, stat­uettes and columns.

He said as the Bel­groves group of com­pa­nies owned the cre­ma­to­ria, cas­ket fac­to­ry and all the an­cil­lary ser­vices, it can of­fer the high­est qual­i­ty at best val­ue prices to peo­ple in their time of be­reave­ment. Fu­ner­als can start at $9,000, Bel­grove said.

Cre­ma­tions and buri­als were the same price. How­ev­er, it was much cheap­er when choos­ing an urn. The cost was $8,000 for an urn con­tain­ing cre­mat­ed re­mains to be placed in one of the colum­bar­i­um's nich­es, com­plete with an en­grav­ing and pho­to­graph of the in­di­vid­ual.

He said the cre­ma­to­ri­um was well-de­signed for mem­bers of the Hin­du com­mu­ni­ty en­abling them to per­form all their rit­u­als just as if they were out­doors. In­di­vid­ual crypts that ac­com­mo­dat­ed four buri­als cost­ing $40,000 and leased for 30 years were large­ly sold out. Re­tirees were the biggest buy­ers who paid $60,000 to be buried near­est the foun­tain and eter­nal flame in the cen­tre of the ceme­tery.

On the south­ern side of the ceme­tery is the Fam­i­ly Es­tate area, bound­ed by hedges and gran­ite bench­es, where a fam­i­ly can choose and have space for 12 en­crypt­ments to­talling $270,000 for 50 years with a per­son­alised gran­ite or mar­ble mon­u­ment of their choice.

The north­ern side holds the Supreme Fam­i­ly Es­tate area, which is the largest and most spa­cious re­served ground and has the ca­pac­i­ty for 16 crypts at a cost of $360,000 for a du­ra­tion of 50 years with a cus­tomised gran­ite or mar­ble mon­u­ment of their choice. Bel­grove re­vealed that since the ceme­tery's open­ing one year ago, it was 50 per cent filled.

He said he didn't want peo­ple to get the im­pres­sion that once the four cas­kets were in­terred, they will stay for eter­ni­ty, but ex­plained that over time they will be "per­pet­u­al­ly and con­tin­u­al­ly re­cy­cled lim­it­less­ly." Un­der the new sys­tem, the sce­nario of peo­ple track­ing through fields of mud in rainy weath­er is a thing of the past, as the area sur­round­ing the grave is flat and cov­ered with grass. For en­crypt­ment ser­vices, an air con­di­tioned tent with decor, which some peo­ple re­mark re­sem­bles a wed­ding set­ting, is pitched, padded chairs are pro­vid­ed, and drink­ing wa­ter and oth­er fa­cil­i­ties are avail­able.

The Bel­groves group of com­pa­nies will be cel­e­brat­ing 124 years of be­ing a fam­i­ly owned busi­ness for six gen­er­a­tions on Au­gust 15.