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Need for Hall County morgue grows along with population, officials say
0530MORGUE 0002
Memorial Park Funeral Home in Gainesville stores many bodies in the Gainesville area until autopsies have been performed and funeral arrangements have been made due to the limited capacity of morgue space in Hall County. County officials want to get a new morgue since they rely heavily on the generosity of Memorial Park Funeral Home at this time. - photo by Erin O. Smith
Sheriff Gerald Couch had it printed on a campaign flyer recently, a political aspiration for his next term. But the need has existed for decades, he said, and with Hall County’s population predicted to grow to more than 300,000 by 2040, the time is ripe to build. “We don’t have a morgue,” Coroner Marion Merck said, reflecting on the age of the problem.