BOSTON (AP) – Democratic National Convention planners thought they’d talked about every possible effect of the widespread road closures needed for convention security. But they forgot about the morticians.

State Sen. Steven A. Baddour, cochairman of the Joint Committee on Transportation, said an operator of a Haverhill, Mass., funeral home called wondering how they were supposed to transport the dead during the shutdown of some 40 miles of roadway during the conventions.

“I thought we had talked about it all,” Baddour told the Boston Globe. “They raised a legitimate point: What are they supposed to do with the bodies? It’s an area I’m sure no one thought of.”

Baddour set up a meeting at the State House in Boston with convention security officials, who told funeral directors they would try to find ways to accommodate hearses entering the security zone to recover bodies.

Despite the assurances, some funeral directors say security restrictions, road closures, and convention-related traffic mean that funerals in downtown Boston could all but come to a halt during the week of the convention.

The problem is bigger than the inconvenience to families who decide to delay memorial services and burials, funeral directors said. Many nursing homes and some hospitals, most notably Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital next door to the FleetCenter in Boston, lack refrigerated facilities for storing bodies.

“And it’s not exactly the coolest time of year,” said David Casper of Casper Funeral Home in South Boston.

After last week’s meeting, security officials promised to let hearses into high-security areas if funeral directors call in advance.

But some funeral homes plan to make trips early in the morning.

“You might have to go five miles north and turn around just to go to a place that’s a mile north of you,” said Dino Manca, director of Joseph A. Langone Jr. Funeral Home in Boston’s North End. “I guess we’ll do it after midnight if we have to.”

At Spaulding, where 296 beds are often occupied by elderly patients, officials plan to work with nearby Massachusetts General Hospital to transport bodies to refrigerated facilities if need be.

“We have a relationship with Mass. General,” Spaulding spokeswoman Christine McDonald said. “We will work with them, if for some reason we need to transport a body.”