‘Somebody’s got to do it’: Forklift driver moves bodies of coronavirus victims

The coronavirus crisis left him with one of the grimmest jobs in New York City — driving the forklift that carries fatal victims of the disease from Brooklyn Hospital Center to a refrigerated trailer outside.

Richard Phipps works as a cleaner and maintenance man at the hospital in Fort Greene, but said Wednesday that he got tasked with his new assignment because he drove a forklift at a prior job.

“I don’t want to be driving this,” he told The Post, while pointing at the red Toyota moving-and-stacking machine.

“Who knew?”

Phipps said the hospital — which erected a white tent late Tuesday to prevent people from seeing bodies wrapped in white sheets get moved into the trailer — wasn’t “being cruel” by using the forklift.

“We are just dealing with what we are dealing with at the present day and time,” he said.

“It could be anybody. It could be you, it could be me, it could be any one of my co-workers.”

He added, “I am doing the best I can. I’m not degrading anybody. I respect them. That’s a human being. It’s not an animal. It’s a human being. It’s another life. It’s a soul that I don’t know.”

Phipps said he was praying for the families of the dead, and “for their comfort” — and even suggested his role in the pandemic was preordained.

“This is out of my control. This is all in God’s control,” he said.

“Somebody’s got to do it. What can I tell you? The Lord called David.”

Phipps said his loved ones “don’t feel no way” about his macabre new work.

“They just tell me to be safe, which everyone of us out here is trying to do,” he said.

Phipps also said that he and his co-workers were “trying to take the utmost care we can” while moving the bodies.

“That’s why you see so many of us out here doing this,” he said.

The hospital’s use of the forklift sparked outrage after a video of it in action was posted on Facebook on Sunday, and was featured on the front page of The Post.

A passerby on Tuesday called the scene “really sad and disturbing,” while a funeral director said, “For the public’s mental health, things like this should not be done in the street.”

The man who posted the 5-1/2 minute clip also repeatedly expressed shock and dismay, saying, “This is for real, y’all,” over and over while recording it on a cell phone inside a vehicle parked across the street.

“As frontline responders under unthinkable stress and in the most challenging circumstance that can be imagined, all hospital personnel are doing their best to care for our patients and each other with the highest level of compassion and respect,” the hospital said in a statement. “While it is unfortunate that people are unsettled by the image, the blunt reality is that very difficult choices are being made every minute of every day, given the age of our hospital and the physical design of our location.”