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CO Legislature passes funeral home crackdown after fake ashes, heaps of rotting bodies make national headlines
Colorado lawmakers passed a sweeping bill Monday to overhaul the state’s lax oversight over funeral homes after a series of horrific incidents, including sold body parts, fake ashes and the discovery of 190 decaying bodies.
The cases have devastated hundreds of already grieving families, and encouraged lawmakers to pass the bill, which now goes to Democratic Gov. Jared Polis’ desk for a signature.
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If signed, the law would give regulators far greater enforcement power over funeral homes and require routine inspections of facilities including after one shutters.
Authorities walk outside a closed funeral home where 115 bodies have been stored, Friday, Oct. 6, 2023, in Penrose, Colo. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)
It joins a second bill that passed both chambers last week which, if signed, would require funeral home directors and other industry roles to pass a background check, get a degree in mortuary science, and pass a national examination and an apprenticeship.
The legislations’ passage arrives after the 190 decomposing bodies were found at a funeral homes’ bug-infested facility about two hours south of Denver. The owners have been arrested and face hundreds of charges, including abuse of a corpse.
At another Colorado funeral home in February, a body was left for over a year in the back of a hearse.
Colorado’s funeral home regulations are some of the weakest in the nation. Funeral home directors don’t have to graduate high school and regulators weren’t required to do routine inspections, as is the case in many other states. These bills would be a dramatic update, putting Colorado on par with the rest of the country.
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HONOLULU — The latest lava fountaining episode of an erupting Hawaii volcano reached 1,000 feet high Tuesday, prompting temporary closures at a national park and part of an important highway because of falling glassy volcanic fragments, including ash.
Kilauea, on Hawaii’s Big Island, has been dazzling residents and visitors for more than year with an on-and-off eruption that periodically sends fountains of lava soaring into the sky.
The fountaining that began Tuesday morning marked the eruption’s 43rd episode since it began in December 2024. A livestream showed two fountains of bright-red lava and smoke. It’s unclear how long the fountaining will last. Some episodes have lasted a few days and others a few hours.
Like other times, the molten rock was confined within Kilauea’s summit crater inside Hawaii Volcanoes National Park and hasn’t threatened homes or buildings.
But the lava fountains were creating trouble for neighboring communities and a highway where the volcanic fragments and ash, known as tephra, was falling. The tephra prompted temporary closures at the national park around the summit and a partial closure of Highway 11, an important route around the island, on either side of the park.
Hawaii County officials also opened a shelter at a district gymnasium for residents and tourists impacted by the road closure or falling tephra. There were no people using the shelter soon after it opened, said Tom Callis, a county spokesperson.
The National Weather Service issued an ashfall warning.
Volcanic tephra can irritate eyes, skin and the respiratory system, according to county officials. Tephra also can clog and cause other problems with water catchment collection systems, which are common in some parts of the Big Island, officials said.
Ash fell so heavily during a previous fountaining episode that some communities needed help from county civil defense workers to clean up ash that coated their homes, Callis said.
Kilauea is one of the world’s most active volcanoes.
LAS VEGAS (FOX5) — Smith’s employees are packing 5,000 meal kits for Clark County students through a partnership with Move for Hunger and Communities in Schools of Southern Nevada.
The event took place on March 10 at Decker Elementary School.
About 270 leaders from across seven states are also participating in building the kits. The donation is valued at approximately $50,000.
Feed The Need: Helping Southern Nevadans fight food insecurity
In the past year, Smith’s and its customers provided more than 16 million meals to nonprofit hunger-relief organizations throughout Nevada through donations.
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