Kern County is celebrating the completion of a $41-million, state-of-the-art Coroner’s Facility in north Bakersfield. Division Chief Dawn Ratliff says the need for the expansion became especially dire during Covid but the project has been in the making for decades, and great care was taken to include security and fire safety protections…

The current Coroner’s Facility on Flower Street that opened in 1974 is outdated and so small that bodies are stored at Lerdo Jail and transported back and forth at a cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars. The new, multi-level building on McMurtrey Avenue off Merle Haggard Drive is 107-thousand square feet and can accommodate 350 bodies, plus dozens of staff members, 60 trainees, and visiting law enforcement. It also has separate rooms for DNA processing in-house…rather than being sent to the DOJ Crime Lab, sample and property storage, and five autopsy tables…including a separate area for infectious cases. Also included, two family rooms for private consultation and counseling, which is currently done in the lobby. The facility is also the new location for the KCSO Property Room, Internal Affairs, and the Public Administrator and Civil Section.