BUFFALO (WBEN) – An unsightly scene Wednesday morning in the Town of Tonawanda, as black smoke billowed out of the Sheridan Park Crematory, operated by Amigone Funeral Home.
1/3 TB member @Shannon_Patch noticed something that obviously wasn't right earlier today. She sent me the pic below of what she saw at the Amigone Crematory. I immediately contacted the DEC who had had someone out to the site within a hours to investigate. Late this afternoon pic.twitter.com/GWbfK1guRR
— Joe Emminger (@joeemmingerr) September 9, 2020
On Friday morning, Town of Tonawanda Supervisor Joe Emminger joined WBEN live to discuss the matter.
"Very disturbing photos, obviously, not only for those who live in the neighborhood, but I would hope for everybody in our community," said Emminger. "This has been an ongoing saga, as it literally started 30 years ago back in the early 90's when they got approval to operate the crematory, and it continues to this day – the crematory, quite frankly, should have never been allowed to go there."
On Friday morning, Town of Tonawanda Supervisor Joe Emminger joined WBEN live to discuss the matter.
While Emminger was hesitant to give too much away about what specifically caused Wednesday's black smoke, he provided a little insight.
"They did two large-body cremations right after each other," he said. "The furnace, I'm told, and I'm not an expert in the field, if you do a large-body cremation, it takes more energy and more heat, so you've got to let it cool down, and they did not let the furnace cool down when they started the second one. That's what caused the overheating of the furnace and the plume of black smoke."
Sheridan Park Crematory issued the following statement Friday afternoon:
On Thursday, September 10, 2020, Sheridan Park Crematory, located at 2600 Sheridan Drive in the Town of Tonawanda, experienced a large plume of black smoke. Upon our intial discovery, an equipment operation function triggered an integrated system bypass to allow for an equipment safety action to take place. While many stories are circulating as to the cause of this event, The Buffalo News (Edition: Septermber 11, 2020) and other news agencies have reported this event was caused by the cremation of "mulitple bodies" at one time. This is simply not true. Sheridan Park Crematory follows all laws and regulations of cremation, which includes only a single body per cremation. Furthermore, the configuration and size of a cremator chamber does not allow for, or accomodate, more than one body.
