San Mateo County Coroner’s Office set to open

“This new facility is truly world class, it has an effective layout, first-grade equipment including technology that relies on modern imaging techniques, and, in the event of catastrophe, which we seem to have quite a few of these days, we have a significantly larger storage capacity,” Pine said.

The goal is to recruit top-level employees and also minimize the county’s carbon footprint, Pine added.

Coroner Robert Foucrault said his office examines around 600 bodies a year and the new facility is capable of holding up to 100 at a time. The building is equipped with a separate locker room with two showers, a changing facility, multiple refrigerators, a freezer, an evidence room, storage lockers, two autopsy rooms and an X-ray room with a state-of-the-art body scanner.

The facility is capable of accommodating three simultaneous autopsies; and Foucault said it would have been helpful during the Half Moon Bay mass shooting in January.

Two of the autopsy tables are in one room and is large enough that cross contamination is not a factor, Foucrault said. The tables can hold up to 700 pounds and there is an electronic body lift for larger bodies. The second autopsy room is specific for homicides and has a police viewing room equipped with a hands-free intercom. The police also have their own entrance and exit and a restroom to avoid cross contamination.

The autopsy rooms bookend a state-of-the-art X-ray room that uses digital X-rays processed in real time and a quick body-scanning machine.

“The Lodox machine is capable of scanning a body in 13 seconds and can detect bullet fragments, broken bones and medical devices with serial numbers,” Foucrault said. “So everybody regardless of homicide or an accident will all be body scanned and it will be a more efficient office.”

The machine is nearly $1 million and it is one of 80 in the nation and one of 20 in the state, he added. Other features include hands-free doors and sinks to prevent injury and keep the facility clean, Foucrault said.

Not all dead bodies are processed through the Coroner’s Office but it does when a doctor did not already determine the cause of death. The facility is nearing completion and it is anticipated to open for examinations sometime in the next week.