KING COUNTY, Wash. -- Voices echo inside the sterile autopsy room. Steel tables wait, outstretched for bodies. Floors are scrubbed clean, and florescent lights cast an eerie glow.

Staff members are preparing the new King County Medical Examiner's Office, which is slated to open early May.

There's enough room to do six autopsies at once. That's twice as many as before.

"We have a larger processing room, larger cooler, larger autopsy room. We have better lighting," said King County Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Richard Haruff. "When you're talking mass fatality, you need capacity."

He remembers when a plane crashed in Yakima last year, and they had to conduct 10 autopsies at once.

"We had to do the pre-processing down in the garage where there wasn't much lighting," he said. "If we were to process 10 bodies from a similar incident now, it would be much easier and (in) a more respectful type of environment."

And processing can be a difficult job. Haruff says many bodies involved in a mass casualty incident are mixed together, and medical examiners don't immediately know which is which. They have to separate the different parts, assign case numbers, then weigh, photograph and label them.

"Sorting things out would be a way to look at it," he said.

The new facility on 9th and Jefferson isn't only focused on autopsies. There's an investigative unit, forensics, evidence, and a large closet where "indigent remains" are stored on shelves after cremation.

"We take about 250 cases per year, handling descendants whose families are unwilling or unable to provide for them funeral or burial services," Haruff said.

The county holds a memorial service for these people every couple of years.

The hallways are large, the rooms spacious and flooded with natural light.

"If you would compare this with the old facility, you would see it's (the old facility is) very antiquated-looking, very cramped. The family area is inappropriate, I think; not adequate to treat people with the kind of respect we'd like to. It's just a couple seats out in the hallway."

The new family room is private, and will be decorated with artwork, as the main lobby has already been.

"We're dealing with a lot of tragedy and so forth," said Haruff. "We want to be scientific, professional, and at the same time compassionate and gentle."